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Old Catholic Maryland

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES.

Rev. William P. Treacy,

AUTHOR OF

" Irish Scholars of The Penal Days" Etc., Etc.

And call to remembrance the works of the fathers, which
they have clone in their generations ; and you shall receive
great glory, and an everlasting name. 1 Mac. : Chap, n., v. LI.

ST. JOSEPH'S RECTORY,

SWEDESBORO,

NEW JERSEY.

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PREFACE.

The history of our Holy and Divine Religion in this
New World is a truly beautiful and heroic story. In
pondering over it we are moved to joyfully exclaim :
" How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the
gospel of peace; of them that bring glad tidings of good
things." As we read of whole villages and entire tribes
being cleansed in the sacred waters of Baptism, our
hearts swell with unbounded gratitude towards the
Author of all graces and mercies. Even Protestant
writers glow with the fire of admiration as they depict
the planting of the Standard of the Cross on the banks
of our rivers and along the shores of our great lakes.
What picture, indeed, can be more touching, or more
inspiring than that of our early missionaries carving the
fair sign of redemption on the tall forest trees ; of our
black-robed chiefs preaching beside their rustic altars to
red groups of savage warriors?

After having closely and calmly examined many old
dusty records and yellow manuscripts I feel myself justi-
fied in saying that the early apostles of Maryland deserve
a brilliant chapter in the History of Christian Missions.
Their zeal and fortitude, their devoted charity, their utter
contempt of earthly comforts, their patience under wrongs
i and insults, their heroic conduct in the midst of dire
^hardships and great dangers, are worthy of the glorious
"men whose names are justly emblazoned in the histories
iii

IV PREFACE.

of India, China, and Japan. The same spirit that ani-
mated the missionaries who first explored the Mississippi,
the Ohio and the Illinois rivers, the same spirit that fired
the souls of the Fathers as they sailed the great lakes of
the North, or the lazy and flower-lined streams of the far
South burned steadily and brightly in their apostolic
hearts. If martyrdom had presented itself to them they
would have as joyously embraced it as did Isaac Jogues
in the Mohawk Valley, or as the heroic priests, Lalle-
mand and Brcebeuf, did upon Lake Huron.

At this distant date it is not easy to form a just esti-
mate of the labors, pains and successes of the early
missionaries of Maryland. That they were true apostles,
that they were men filled with the fire of Pentecost is an
undisputed fact. Though they reaped in joy, it may
truly be said that they sowed in tears. Their journey to
this continent in a miserable sailing-vessel was a fit
prelude to the life they were henceforth to lead in the
service of the slave and the untutored savage. Here
they were to be deprived of the thousand comforts and
advantages of the civilization of the Old World. With
the poorest mode of conveyance they were obliged to
travel over vast tracts of forest-country, and to cross sheets
of water that seemed to have no limits. In cases where
dispensations were required they had to communicate
with an ecclesiastical superior who was separated from
them by the waters of the Atlantic. Grave obstacles
were often thrown in their way by those who should
assist and cherish them. A vile soldiery were glad to
hunt them down, while bigoted judges were only too
happy to have an occasion to rebuke them, if not to con-
demn them to punishment. With weary hearts and

PREFACE. V

bleeding feet they carried on the great work for which
they had left their native land. Still they did not grow
despondent. They bravely toiled on and kept the Lamp
of Faith brightly burning beside the river, creek, and bay,
and in the depth of the forest shade. They went around
with the cross they loved hanging on their breasts, or
shining in their hands, scattering the rich seeds of peace,
joy, and virtue. Their apostolate was thrice blessed, and
even non-Catholic writers speak as boldly and loudly in
their praises as we have ventured to do. " Before the year
1649," says a generous and accurate Protestant historian,
"they labored with their lay-assistants, in various fields ;
and around their lives will ever glow a bright and
glorious remembrance. Their pathway was through the
desert; and their first chapel the wigwam of an Indian.
Two of them were here, at the dawn of our history ;
they came to St. Mary's with the original emigrants ;
they assisted, by pious rites, in laying the corner-stone
of a State ; they kindled the torch of civilization in the
wilderness ; they gave consolation to the grief-stricken
pilgrim ; they taught the religion of Christ to the simple
sons of the forest. The history of Maryland presents no
better, no purer, no more sublime lesson than the story
of the toils, sacrifices and successes of her early mission-
aries."

Though many of the Jesuits would naturally prefer
laboring in England during the Penal Times to evang-
elizing a new country, still this was not the case with
all. Many a venerable Jesuit in England, many a
novice, many a lay-brother, many a distinguished
professor in the colleges of Liege, Watten, Bruges, and
St. Omer's longed and prayed to be sent to Maryland.

VI PREFACE.

The story of the poor infidels who dwelt along the
shores of the Chesapeake — or as that beautiful bay was
known to the Spaniards, St. Mary's — touched many a
generous heart in Europe, and when the English Provin-
cial, Father Edward Knott, asked for volunteers for his
American . Mission, Jesuits, old and young, novices,
Brothers, and Priests enthusiastically petitioned to be
sent to work for the salvation of the hapless red men.
From the letters of those who asked to be sent on the
Maryland Mission, we can learn the motives that
actuated the first Fathers here, and the spirit that guided
them. Some wrote that in going to Maryland they
wished to imitate the glorious St. Francis Xavier. Some
asked to go there in hopes of winning a martyr's crown.
All wished to go, that they might advance the glory of
God, and procure the salvation of souls. " Whether I
die by sea in my journey, or by land in Maryland,"
wrote Fr. Christopher Morris from Liege, in 1640, "sure
I am I shall have as good, yea more glorious a
sepulchre than in Liege. The cause will ennoble the
death. The inconveniences of diet, apparel and lodging
will be made easy and supportable, by the frequent
memory of my Saviour's vinegar and gall, and naked-
ness, and hard bed of His cross." In the same letter
Father Morris said that he more highly esteemed " the
teaching of Christ's cross in all senses in Maryland to
the most honorable chair either in Liege or all Europe
besides." Father Lawrence Worsley wrote to Fr.
Knott : " I had no sooner heard the relation of the
happy success of our Mission in Maryland, and the great
hope of converting souls to their Lord and Creator, but
J was surprised with no small joy and comfort; which,

PREFACE. Vll

nevertheless, was but little, compared with that which I
received when I read those sweet and no less comfortable
lines with which your Reverence invited not any one in
particular, but all in general, to employ their lives and
labors in the undertaking of so glorious an enterprise, of
converting souls to God by means of that mission. And
to tell you the truth, my joy was so great, that no
thought nor word for a long time could come from me
which resounded not, ' Maryland.' " Since the letters of
St. Francis Xavier were read in the halls of Coimbra,
Paris, Rome and Louvain, no letters from distant missions
excited so much the zeal and enthusiasm of students and
priests as those that came from Maryland. " Maryland "
became a loved name, a cherished, a venerated name
among apostolic men. " Maryland " became the watch-
word among the English sons of St. Ignatius.

The names of many of the priests who attended to the
spiritual wants of the Catholics of Southern Maryland
are unfortunately forgotten on earth, but we feel confi-
dent they are recorded in letters of golden light in the
great Book of Life. Certain it is, that, at least for the
first hundred years, they were, most of them, confessors
of the faith, men who had suffered imprisonment and
banishment for loyalty to conscience ; men who, like St.
Peter, had worn chains for their love of the religion
founded by the Crucified One. A great number of them
were scholars who had distinguished themselves at the
colleges of Rheims and Douay, at Liege and Louvain.
Nothing can give us a clearer insight into the character
of the early missionaries of Maryland than a careful
examination of the libraries they formed. If these
libraries can prove anything, they can show that the

VI 11 PREFACE.

first Fathers in Maryland were serious and deep
scholars. They seemed to delight in the study of
learned and profound works. They daily communed
with the ablest thinkers of Europe ; they continually
feasted on the spiritual works of the most approved
ascetic writers. On their tables could be seen the
Summa of St. Thomas, the Commentaries of Cornelius a
Lapide, the Controversies of Bellarmine, and the Annals
of Baronius. That they made a careful examination of
the Holy Scriptures is told by the fact that they had in
their libraries many Testaments in Latin, Greek, and
English. The learning of the missionaries is also shown
by the fact that many of them, no doubt while yet
students, wrote their notes on the margins of their
books in the Greek and Hebrew tongues.

It may not be out of place to note the fact, that many
of the early missionaries of Maryland were of gentle
blood. Many of them were born in lordly homes, amid
the rich and beautiful fields of old England. It is a his-
toric truth, that some of them were lineal descendants of
those brave knights who accompanied Richard, the
Lion-Hearted, into Palestine, and fought under the red-
cross banner on the plains of Ascaloni Some of them
could trace their noble pedigree back to the time when
William, the Conqueror, landed on the shores of Britain.
Not a few of them were allied by blood to one or other
of the royal families of the British Empire. But better
still, some of their number could count among their kins-
men, heroes who died as martyrs for the faith of Christ.
When we call to mind how many of Maryland's mis-
sionaries were in youth nursed in the lap of luxury, how
they were loved and honored by vast numbers of ser-

PREFACE. IX

vants and dependants, how their every wish was gratified
by indulgent parents, we can more fully realize their
sacrifice in coming on the mission, we can better appre-
ciate the zeal which enabled them to endure the hard-
ships and trials of their daily toils and duties. Among
the missionaries of Maryland, we find a Copley, three
Poultons, a Mosely, a Knight, a FitzWilliams, of Lin-
coln, an Atwood, of Beverie, a Forster, of Suffolk, a
Thorold, a Whitgreave, a Molyneux, and several mem-
bers of the Brooke family.

Neither the " dry powder " of the Puritans, nor the
famed claymore of the fanatic Highlanders, who came
with the Parliamentarians, could destroy the pure faith
handed down from their forefathers to the Catholics of
Maryland. Persecution failed, ignobly failed in that favor-
ed " Land of Mary." The persecutor and his swords have
long since descended into unhallowed graves, " unwept,
unhonored, and unsung." Even in the last century, St.
Mary's county alone, became the mother of many another
Catholic settlement, from Frederick to Kentucky. To-
day the children of Southern Maryland keep the priceless
pearl of Faith with them in many a home from Boston
to the Golden Gate. The descendants of old St. Mary
families have become distinguished missionaries in the
far regions of the West ; they have become prelates of
the Church, noted alike for their piety and learning ; they
have shown themselves laymen, worthy of their grand
old Pilgrim Fathers. The chaste daughters of St. Mary's
have filled the cells of convents not only in Georgetown,
Washington, Baltimore, Mobile, New York and Phila-
delphia, but also in many a European town and city.

X PREFACE.

A few words about the custom which prevailed among
early missionaries of having aliases :

During the Penal Days cruel laws were in force against
Seminarists and Jesuits who dared set foot in England
and Ireland. In many cases, the penal laws against
Catholic priests were also put into execution in the Brit-
ish Colonies. In order, therefore, to escape detection,
Catholic missionaries generally adopted assumed names,
and put on various disguises. Outwardly they took
upon themselves offices which became only laymen.
They sometimes acted in the capacity of coachmen, clerks
or booksellers. Often they were forced to assume char-
acters more romantic. A priest was seen in Waterford,
Ireland, " with a ruffling suit of apparel, gilt rapier, and
dagger hanging at his side." A Catholic bishop was
seexi in the same city dressed as a Highland piper, and
playing martial airs upon the national instrument of
Scotland. Sometimes the Fathers assumed military
titles, such as colonel or captain. The Very Rev. Father
General was occasionally spoken of as, " his Lordship."
Fr. Hogan says, in speaking of the Irish Jesuits : " On
account of the dangers to which they and the Catholics
were exposed, the Jesuit Fathers took or gave false
names ; thus Holywood is Jo. Bus., and sometimes Bush-
lock, Laundrie, the Pilot, etc. ; Archer is Bowman, or
Bertram's eldest son ; Wise is Barbarossa ; O'Carney is
De Franca ; Wall is Philaberto." Fr. Acquaviva, Gen-
eral of the Society, was known as " Claude Merchaunt at
Rouen." By a glance at this book the reader will see
how common was the practice among the Fathers in
Maryland of assuming strange names.

Though the Fathers were often screened by their aliases,

PREFACE- XI

it was by means of their strange apparel that they the more
frequently escaped the hands of their enemies. We learn
from old records that they sometimes attired themselves
in the trappings of worldings, put gay feathers in their
hats, and wore " scarlet cloaks over crimson satin suits."
If we consult old writers we can learn what spies and
priest-hunters thought of the adroitness of the Fathers
in disguising themselves. Gee quaintly writes : " If about
Bloomsbury or Holborn thou meet a good snug fellow
in a gold-laced suit, a cloak lined through with velvet,
one that hath good store of coin in his purse, rings on
his fingers, a watch in his pocket, which he will value at
^20, a very broad laced band, a stilleto by his side, a man
at his heels, willing (upon small acquaintance) to intrude
himself into thy company, and still desiring to insinuate
himself with thee, then take heed of a Jesuit of the
prouder sort of priests. This man hath vowed poverty.
* * * * M an y f t ne g ec> Priests and Friars go as gal-
lantly as these, but the Jesuits have the superlative cog-
nizance whereby they know one another, and that is, as
I observed from this time, a gold hat band studded with
letters or characters. Perhaps at another time they may
have another mark, according to their watch-word given
to them."

It may not be out of place to remark here, that there
was not much natural pleasure, if there apeared to be
somewhat of romance, in the life led by the Jesuits in
England during the Penal Days. We cannot help re-
membering that in a black, strong fortress, not far from
the Thames, a hundred grave-like cells longed to receive
them. We are still mindful that there were, in Christian
London, a sharp axe, and a thick block that thirsted

Xll PREFACE.

hourly for Jesuit blood. We have read, too, that when
some of these gaily-attired Jesuits were stripped of their
finery to be flogged, or to have their bodies quartered
and burnt, rough hair-shirts were found close to their
skins.

The correspondence of the Fathers in Maryland is
often a complete riddle to the uninitiated. Many of the
expressions embodied in some old letters that we have
seen, will, we believe, forever remain unexplained. In
writing to their friends in England the missionaries used
figures and metaphors never referred to by our rhetori-
cians. Even the experts,who made a livelihood by hunting
down priests, must have been sometimes puzzled to make
out the meaning of some letters which came by unlaw-
ful means into their possession. When some of the mis-
sionaries wished to intimate that a great number had been
baptized, they merely said : " During our journey water
was in great demand."

The writer of this little work has used in its prepara-
tion, copies of the Roman Catalogues, Annual Letters by
the early missionaries, Baptismal Registers, old records
and note-books, private letters, deeds, wills and convey-
ances. He has also consulted the Woodstock Letters, Br.
Foley's English Records, Dr. Oliver's Collectanea, Dodds
Llistory, the Annals of Annapolis, Father Hogan's Irish
Records, and the Jesuit Archives of Maryland. To His
Eminence, James Cardinal Gibbons, the author is indebted
for many facts gleaned from the Archie piscopal Archives.
To his esteemed friend, Dr. John Gilmary Shea, the illus-
trious historian of the Church in America, he gives thanks
for valuable assistance.

CHAPTER I.

When the Pilgrim Fathers of Maryland, flying from
cruel persecution in England, set sail from Cowes, in the
beautiful Isle of Wight, in 1633, they had as companions of
their voyage the Jesuit missionaries, Frs. Andrew White,
John Altham, Timothy Hayes and Brother Thomas
Gervase. The story of their voyage in the Dove and
Ark, as told by Father White, is a charming and touch-
ing narrative. Before starting, on the Feast of St. Cecilia,
u a gentle east wind blowing," they piously consecrated
their little fleet to God, the Blessed Virgin, 'St. Ignatius,
and all the Guardian Angels of Maryland. As they
dropped down the British Channel, here and there along
the shore some faithful and loving friends waved them
a parting adieu, and knelt down to invoke blessings upon
their heads. At Yarmouth and Hurst Castles they were
greeted by cheerful salutes of artillery. Much, indeed,
did the exile band need encouragement. A dangerous
way spread out before them. Besides the storms and
fogs to be faced, other sources of fear awaited them.
Turks and Pirates, at the time, everywhere infested the
seas and caused terror and dismay in the breasts of even
the boldest who had to plough the deep. The protection
of God and His Saints seemed the only shield for the
poor pilgrims. On one occasion of distress they invoked
the aid of St. Clement, and received by the powerful
intercession of that Saint the needed succor. Almost
every day, after losing sight of land, they encountered

13

14 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

new perils. Still, in the very midst of their trials and
dangers they kept heart. Men of Faith never lose
courage, never despair. On a pleasant evening, when
the waters enjoyed a more than ordinary repose, they
had some real, some home-like pleasure in racing with a
fine merchant ship called The Dragon.

After many delays, and much moving in out-of-the-
way directions, the Pilgrims sailed out from the coast of
Spain to the Fortunate Isles, and thence steered for
Barbadoes. At Montserrat they met a colony of Irish-
men who had been banished from Virginia on account
of professing the Catholic Faith. After leaving behind
them the last of the Caribbee Islands, they at length
reached Point Comfort in Virginia. There they re-
mained for a few days. On the 3rd of March they
entered the Chesapeake Bay. " We turned," says Father
White, " our course to the north to reach the Potomac
River. The Chesapeake Bay, ten leagues (thirty Italian
miles) wide flows gently between its shores ; it is four,
five, and six fathoms deep, and abounds in fish when the
season is favorable ; you will scarcely find a more beau-
tiful sheet of water. Yet it yields the palm to the
Potomac river, which we named after St Gregory.

" Having now arrived at the wished-for country, we
allotted names according to circumstances. And indeed
the Promontory, which is toward the south, we con-
secrated with the name of St. Gregory (now Smith
Point), naming the northern one (now Point Lookout)
St. Michaels, in honor of all the angels. Never have I
beheld a larger or more beautiful river. The Thames
seems a mere rivulet in comparison with it; it is not
disfigured with any swamps, but has firm land on both

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 5

sides of it. Fine groves of trees appear, not choked with
briers or bushes and undergrowth, but growing at
intervals as if planted by the hand of man, so that you
can drive a four-horse carriage, wherever you choose,
through the midst of the trees. Just at the mouth of
the river we observed the natives in arms. That night
fires blazed through the whole country, and since they
had never seen such a large ship, messengers were sent
in all directions, who reported that a canoe like an island
had come with as many men as there were trees in the
wood. We went on, however, to Heron's Islands, so
called from the numbers of these birds that abound
there. The first island we came to we called St.
Clement's Island.

" This island is covered with cedar and sassafras trees
and flowers and herbs for making all kinds of salads, and
it also produces a wild nut tree, which bears a very hard
walnut with a thick shell and a small but very delicious
kernel. Since, however, the island contains only four
hundred acres, we saw that it would not afford room for
the new settlement. Yet we looked for a suitable place
to build a fort (perhaps on the island itself) to keep off
strangers, and to protect the trade of the river and our
bounderies, for this was the narrowest crossing-place on
the river.

" On the day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy
Virgin Mary, in the year 1634," continues Father White,
" we celebrated on this island the first Mass which had
been ever offered up in this part of the world. After we
had completed the Sacrifice, we took upon our shoulders
a great cross which we had shaped out of a tree, and
advancing in order to the appointed place, with the as-

l6 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

sistance of the Governor and his associates and the other
Catholics, we erected a trophy to Christ, the Saviour,
humbly reciting, on our bended knees, the Litanies of
the Holy Cross with great emotion."

The final resting-place chosen by Leonard and George
Calvert, brothers of Lord Baltimore, and the two " hun-
dred gentlemen adventurers and their servants " who
sailed from England in the Dove and Ark, was the little
Indian village, known in Maryland history as St. Mary's
City. The fact that this ill-fated town* has almost
entirely disappeared has long afforded writers a theme
for much beautiful and pathetic description. At present
scarcely " a stone is left upon a stone " to remind the
visitor that it once existed. A few scattered bricks, and
a vault, the very names of whose occupants are un-
known, are its only relics now.

We may affirm, without fear of contradiction, that St.
Mary's County, in which St. Mary's City was located, is
one of the most hallowed spots on this continent. As
Mr. Bancroft said, it was at one time " the only home of
religious freedom in the wide world. "f Dedicated itself
to the Virgin Mother, nearly all its rivers and creeks, its
farms and villages, its roads, woods, and hills have been
placed under the protection of saints and angels. The
Mass-bell has been heard for more than two centuries in
all its hamlets, and the Clean Oblation, which was fore-
told by the prophet, has been offered up in hundreds^

* "St. Mary's never had more than sixty houses, but the settlers
call town any place where as many houses are as individuals
required to make a riot; that is twenty." Rec. Eng. Prov. Series
vii.

f Bancroft's Hist. U. S. vol. I, 240, 247, Boston, ISo'J.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I J

aye, in thousands of its devout old homes. It has been
sanctified by the labors and sufferings of devoted mis-
sionaries, and by the faith and charity of a pious and
truly Catholic people.

St. Mary's County was, from its first settlement by
European colonists, a Catholic colony, and is to this
day, thank God, nearly as Catholic as Belgium, Ireland,
or French Canada. It is true that the Protestant party,
helped by the English Protestant or Puritan government,
was, from time to time, in power, and finally, in the
Revolution of 1689, gained complete ascendency; still
the mass of the people always were Catholic.

Mr. Davis, a Protestant author, writes as follows on
this subject:

" St. Mary's was the home — the chosen home — of the
disciples of the Catholic Church. The fact has been
generally received. It is sustained by the tradition of
two hundred years and by volumes of unwritten tes-
timony ; by the proceedings of the privy council ; by
the trial of law cases ; by the wills and inventories ; by
the land-records and rent-rolls ; and by the very names
originally given to the towns and hundreds, to the creeks
and rivulets, to the tracts and manors of the country.
The State itself bears the name of a Roman Catholic
queen. Of the six hundreds of this small county, in 1650
five had the prefix St. . Sixty tracts and manors, most of
them taken up at a very early period, bear the same
Roman Catholic mark. The creeks and villages, to this
day, attest the widespread prevalence of the same tastes,
sentiments, and sympathies."

St. Mary's City was selected as the headquarters ot
the missionaries. The wigwam of an Indian chief was

1 8 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

converted into a place of worship, and thus the poor hut
of a savage became the first chapel in Maryland. "As
this humble shelter," writes Mr. Bernard Campbell,
" must have been too small to admit the colonists, it is
most probable divine worship was performed in the open
air. How interesting must have been the spectacle pre-
sented on the first Sunday after the landing, when the
venerable priest (Father Andrew White), assisted by his
fellow missionaries, celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of
Mass, with all the pomp and splendor which the humble
means of the colonists enabled them to impart to the
August Rite. Their Church was the great temple of
nature ; the beautiful river of St. Mary spread her
broad and mirror-like bosom at their feet ; around them
were the deep forests, which, under the gentle influence
of spring, had now begun to form the leafy canopy that
sheltered our infant church." The idea of Lord Balti-
more in sending Jesuits to Maryland was to afford the
colonists all the succors and advantages of religion. He
thought also of the poor savages who sat in the shades
of unbelief. But, no doubt, he gave them only a second-
ary thought. But the missionaries could hardly be ex-
pected to confine their ardent zeal to the little band of
settlers at St. Mary's, while the woods around them were
dark with the night and gloom of souls who lived in
ignorance of all great Christian truths, to whom the clear
vision of the Light of the World had never appeared.
We know that almost immediately after the landing of
the passengers of the Dove and Ark, Father Altham be-
gan his work of evangelizing the Indians. Father White,
after describing the celebration of the First Mass on St.
Clement's Island, thus writes : " Now when the Gov-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 19

ernor had understood that many princes were subject to
the Emperor of Pascatawaye, he determined to visit him,
in order that, after explaining the reason of our voyage,
and gaining his good will, he might secure an easier ac-
cess to the others. Accordingly, taking along with our
pinnace another, which he had procured in Virginia, and
leaving the ship (the Ark) at anchor, he sailed round and
landed on the southern side of the river. And when he
had learned that the savages had fled inland, we went on
to a city which takes its name from the river, being also
called Potomac. There the young king's uncle, named
Archihu, was his guardian and acted as regent in the
kingdom ; a sober, discreet man. He willingly listened
to Father Altham, who had been selected to accompany
the Governor, for I was still kept with the ship's cargo.
And when the Father explained, as far as he could,
through the interpreter, Henry Fleet, the errors of the
heathen, he would ever and anon acknowledge his own ;
and when he was informed that we had come thither,
not to make war, but out of good will towards them, in
order to extend civilization and instruction to his ignor-
ant race, and show them the way to heaven and at the
same time with the intention of communicating to them
the advantages of commerce with distant countries, he
gave us to understand that he was pleased at our coming.
The interpreter was one of the Protestants of Virginia,
and so, as the Father could not stop for further discourse
at the time, he promised that he would return before
long. 'That is just what I wish,' said Archihu, 'we
will eat at the same table ; my followers too shall go to
hunt for you, and we shall have all things in common.' "
In the beginning our missionaries were obliged to reside

20 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

at St. Mary's City, and not among the Indians as some
of them desired. From their headquarters, however,
they sallied forth, from time to time, in order to convert
the savages. Love and esteem for the lives of the priests
seem to have been the motive which urged the rulers of
St. Mary's not to allow them to remain for any long
period among the Indians. The Annual Letters for
1637-8, say: "Though the authorities of this colony
have not yet allowed us to dwell among the savages, on
account both of the prevailing sickness and of the hostile
disposition shown by the barbarians towards the English,
to the extent of murdering a man from this colony who
had gone amongst them for the sake of trade, and also
of entering into a conspiracy against our whole nation ;
still we hope that one of us will shortly secure a station
among the barbarians. Meanwhile, we devote ourselves
more zealously to the English ; and, since there are Pro-
testants as well as Catholics in the colony, we have
labored for both, and God has blessed our labors. For
among the Protestants nearly all who came from Eng-
land in 1638, and many others, have been converted to
the faith."

Great piety, fervor, and peace soon reigned among the
inhabitants of St. Mary's. Many of the leading gentle-
men there made the Spiritual Exercises according to the
method of St. Ignatius, and became exemplary Catholics.
"As for the Catholics," say the Annual Letters for 1639,
" the attendance on the Sacraments here is so large, that
it is not greater among the faithful in Europe, in propor-
tion to their numbers. The most ignorant have been
catechized, and catechetical lectures have been delivered
to the more advanced every Sunday ; on feast days they

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 21

have been very rarely left without a sermon. The sick
and the dying, who were numerous this year and dwelt
far apart, have been assisted in every way, so that not a
single person has died without the Sacraments. We have
buried very many, but we have baptized a greater num-
ber."

The early government of Lord Baltimore's colony was
patriarchal, and all the settlers lived something after the
manner of the chosen people of old. It was not until
their numbers had considerably increased that they
thought of framing a code of laws and establishing a
political constitution. In 1635, was convened the first
popular assembly of Maryland, consisting of the whole
body of " freemen," by which various regulations were
framed for the maintenance of good order in the Pro-
vince. Two years later on, the second assembly of Mary-
land was convoked. To this council the Jesuit mission-
aries, Fathers White, Copley and Altham were sum-
moned. The third assembly, was held in 1639, and was
rendered memorable by the introduction of a representa-
tive body into the provincial constitution.

The infant colony of Maryland found itself surrounded
on all sides by evils and dangers. The principal part of
Lord Baltimore's followers, as Catholics, could hope for no
help, no protection, no friendship from their Protestant
parent country. They might well be thankful, indeed, to
the rulers of that kingdom for being permitted to forsake
without stripes and blows, their ancestral homes and
hearths, and their rich and broad domains. Their next-
door neighbors, the Virginians, watched them with an
eye of envy and hatred. The Indians who surrounded
them in the beginning, for the most part, were friendly

22 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

towards them ; but how long could they rely on the fickle
friendship of those red warriors whose " axe," as one of
their chiefs truly said, " was always in their hands ?"

It is a fact of history, admitted even by Protestant
writers, that the Catholic founders of Maryland treated
the Indians in the most humane and Christian-like man-
mer. " Governor Calvert," says Kilty, " made a free and
fair purchase of the natives with articles suited to their
state of life, and brought from England for that purpose.
The prudence and justice which dictated this policy in
preference to the forcible intrusion which had marked the
commencement of the first Southern plantation, appeared
to have governed the subsequent proceedings of the Pro-
prietary and his Officers for extending their limits of
possession." Still the redmen, sometimes stirred up by
jealousy, at other times excited by the deceitful words of
desperate plotters, who hated to see the Catholic colony
flourishing like a garden, made deadly onslaughts upon
the M pale-faced " inhabitants of St. Mary's City.

In 1 64 1 the Indians grew extremely hostile to all who
were not of their race. The war whoop of the fierce Sus-
quehannoughs could be heard almost within a bow-shot
of the little capital of the Maryland settlement. Their
light steps could be heard by attentive ears in all the en-
circling woods. At dusk, too, their bark canoes could be
seen by watchful eyes gliding silently among the tall reeds
on the banks of the St. Mary's River. OfteVi the flight
of a frighted duck, or the cry of a heron, was the only
signal given that the Indian foe was near. We cannot
easily picture to ourselves the disturbed condition of life
led by the peaceful and virtuous followers of Lord Balti-
more during these days. They rested, if rest they could

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 23

under such circumstances, with their defensive weapons
at their pillows. The missionaries, who had their head-
quarters at St. Mary's City, shared in all the trials and
hardships of the period. For a time, as they were mere
prisoners, and could not accomplish the sublime end for
which they had come, they thought of removing from
the Capital to some place of more security, and in which,
or from which, they could carry on their apostolic labors.
" Even the devoted and fearless missionaries," says a Pro-
testant writer, " began seriously to think of abandoning
their station, and establishing themselves at Potupaco,
which was less exposed to the ravages of the cruel and
warlike Susquehannough tribe."

About 1644, one year before the arrest of White and
Fisher, St. Mary's City was endangered by the rebellion
of the pirate Ingle and the desperado Claiborne. The in-
famous histories of both these bad men are too well
known to need a recital here. We allude to them at
present as being the probable cause of the removal of the
Fathers from the Capital to St. Inigoes. In the above
year, when Claiborne took St. Mary's City by force, the
missionaries were immediately obliged to fly for safety.
It has been stated that they then retired to St. Inigoes.
This was a part of the property taken possession of by
the Fathers on their first landing with the pilgrims in
Maryland.

After some time Claiborne was expelled from St.
Mary's City, but he and his Puritan party again suc-
ceeded, in 1652, in becoming masters of it. It is not our
intention to depict the battles fought between the con-
tending parties from that time to the beginning of 1658,
when the Lord Proprietary was once more reinstated in

2 4 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

his lawful rights and authority. But as many of the facts
that help to form the history of that period will throw
some light upon the story of our missionaries, we shall
glance at them in passing.

After the defeat of Governor Stone, in 1655, the Puri-
tans took many distinguished prisoners to Annapolis.
Among these were Governor Stone himself, Colonel
Price, Captain Gerard, Captain Lewis, Captain Kendall,
Captain Guither, Major Chandler and all the rest of the
councillors, officers, and soldiers of Lord Baltimore.
Among the commanders and soldiers who fought with
Governor Stone, we are told, were many papists. From
these was taken all their " consecrated ware." "The con-
secrated ware" consisted of " Pictures, Crucifixes, and
rows of Beads, with great stores of Reliques." Histo-
rians tell us that the Puritans of Providence, now An-
napolis, several days after the fight on the Severn, put to
death, in cold blood, four of Governor Stone's men.
These were William Eltonhead, one of the council, Cap-
tain William Lewis, John Legatt and John Pedro. Per-
secution again raised its " red right hand " in Maryland.
The Catholics were prohibited from voting, and it was
11 enacted and declared, that none who profess and exer-
cise the Popish (commonly called the Roman Catholic)
religion, can be protected in this province by the laws of
England formerly established, and yet unrepealed ; nor
by the Commonwealth of England, etc. ; but to be re-
strained from the exercise thereof." Liberty was granted
to all "provided" it "be not extended to Popery or
Prelacy."

The Puritans sacked and plundered the Fathers' Re-
sidences at Portobacco and St. Inigoes. The following

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 25

is the Annual Letter for 1656: "In Maryland, during
the last year, our Fathers have passed safely through
grievous dangers, and have had to contend with great
difficulties and trials, as well from enemies as from our
own people. The English who inhabit Virginia had
made an attack on the colonists of Maryland, although
their own countrymen, and having guaranteed their lives
on certain conditions they carried off the Governor of
Maryland, with many other prisoners. Their promise
was, however, treacherously violated and four of the
captives, of whom three were Catholics, were shot dead.
Rushing into our houses they cried out death to the im-
postors as they called us, determined on a merciless
slaughter of all who should be caught. But the Fathers,
under the protection of God, passed in a boat before their
very faces, unrecognized by them. After which, their
books, furniture, and whatever else was in the house, fell
a prey to the robbers. With almost the entire loss of
their property, private and domestic, and with great peril
of their lives, they were secretly carried into Virginia,
where they now are suffering from the greatest want of
necessaries, and can find no means of support. They
live in a mean hut, low and confined, not much unlike a
cistern, or even that tomb in which the great defender
of the Faith, St. Athanasius, lay concealed for many
years. To their other miseries this inconvenience is
added, that whatever comfort or aid under the name of
stipend was this year destined for them from pious per-
sons in England has been lost, the ship in which it was
carried being intercepted. But nothing distresses them
more than that there is not a sufficient supply of wine to
enable them to offer up the Holy Sacrifice. They have

26 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

no servant, either, for domestic use, or for directing their
way through unknown and suspected places, or even to
row and steer the boat when needed. Often over spa^
cious and vast rivers, one of them, alone and unaccom-
panied, passes and repasses long distances, with no pilot
directing his course than divine Providence."

In 1688, the Orange Revolution swept over England ;
James was dethroned, and William and Mary took his
place. The hopes of the Catholics were dashed to the
ground, and these saw with dismay a new reign of terror
inaugurated. Catholic schools and chapels were every-
where closed, and priests and schoolmasters proscribed
and banned. The next year, 1689, the English Revolu-
tion extended to America.

It does not enter into the scope of this book to tell
how the Puritans took forcible possession of St. Mary's
City. A full account of this sad event may be found in
any history of Maryland. Suffice it is to say, that the
venerated Catholic settlement was for a time in the hands
of the bigotted " Committee of Safety," and that this body
passed over the government to Governor Copley. The
first act passed by the Assembly convened by this gen-
tleman was one recognizing the title of William and
Mary. " The next was an act making the Church of
England the established church of the province, and thus
putting an end to that equality in religion which had
hitherto been Maryland's honor. It provided for the
division of the ten counties into thirty-one parishes, and
imposed a tax of forty pounds of tobacco upon each
taxable person, as a fund for the building of (Protestant)
churches and the support of the (Protestant) clergy,"
Governor Copley died on the 12th of September, 1693,

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 2J

and Sir Thomas Lawrence, his former Secretary, assumed
the government ad interim as President until a new Gov-
ernor should arrive.

A new Governor soon arrived in the person of Francis
Nicholson, well known in the histories of New York and
Virginia. It is supposed by some that Nicholson was at
one time a Catholic. I found, in " The Documentary
History of New York," the following sworn testimony
to that effect :

Affidavits Against Nicholson.

The depositions of Nicholas Brown, Aged Twenty three
Years, the said Deponent declares that he being in the
Service of Y e late King Anno One thousand six hundred
Eighty Six some time in July and August, did see
Frances Y e late lieu 4 Governor of Y e fort at New York
severall times in Y e Masse, but especially two times in
Y e Kings tent at Hunsloheath in old ingland, being there
to Exercise his devotions, & did Y e same upon his Knees
before the Alter in the papaist Chappel, where the Mass
was said, that himself, this deponent is ready to Confirm
and declare upon Oath in testimony of the truth & have
hereunto Set my hand, In New York this 12th day of
Septem r Anno 1689.

Signed Nicholas Brown.

the 13th 7 ber in New York
Then appeared before me Nich ls Brown & sworn before
me the aforesaid to be the truth.

Signed G. Beekman, Justice.

" Soon after his arrival," writes Scharf, "Governor Nich-
olson convened the Assembly to meet on the 2 1st of Sep-

28 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

tember, not in St. Mary's but at Anne Arundel town,
afterwards called Annapolis. This choice foreshadowed
the doom of the former city, the cradle of the province ;
and at this session the removal of the seat of government
was decided upon. The reasons alleged for the change
were not without weight; but it is probable that the true
motives were to be found in the fact that St. Mary's was
especially a Catholic settlement, was, beyond other towns,
devoted to the proprietary government, and was closely
connected with all those ties and associations which it
was the policy of the new government to break up. Great
was the consternation at St. Mary's at a change which
brought her certain ruin, and a pathetic appeal was made
to the Assembly to reconsider their action. Pathos and
humility were but thrown away on the Lower House,
the coarse and almost brutal scorn of whose reply shows
the acrimony of the dominant party. Remonstance and
appeal were all in vain. The ancient city was stripped of
her privileges, of everything that gave her life, and she
was left to waste and perish from the earth. Her popu-
lation departed, her houses fell to ruins, and nothing is
now left of her but a name and a memory."

It was in the year 1694, that the seat of government was
moved from St. Mary's to Annapolis.

Father Andrew White was born in London, it is said,
in the year 1579. Little is known of his early years, but
we may well suppose that they were passed in the prac-
tice of virtue and in severe application to study. The
great evangelist of America comes before us at once in
history as a priest crowned with a halo of science and
piety. We hear of him as a newly-anointed priest at
Douay in 1605, and the following year we see him cast

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 29

into prison for the faith, and thence, with forty-six other
clergymen, driven into perpetual banishment. He then
retired to Catholic Spain and became professor in one of
the English or Irish Colleges there. Soon after this he
resolved to join the sons of St. Ignatius, and for that pur-
pose left Spain and proceeded to Louvain. Of Father
White's novice-home we wrote the following brief sketch,
a few years ago, for the Woodstock Letters :

Near the Chateau Cesar, or Castrum Caesaris, Lou-
vain, high up on Mont-Cesar, stand three or four private
dwellings and a ruined stable. Few, even among the
students of Louvain, know that these dwellings occupy
the site of the old English Jesuit Novitiate, and that the
stable itself was once a part of that hallowed house. When
the English Fathers of the Society of Jesus were driven
from their own country, in 1607, they rented a house on
Mont-Cesar, and used it for a novitiate. This novitiate
was opened by Father Parsons, in the same year, with six
priests, two scholastics, and five lay-brothers. God gave
this novice-home a singular and wonderful benediction —
he gave it an apostle and a martyr. While Hugh O'Neill,
Prince of Ulster, occupied the Chateau Cesar, near him,
in the humble Jesuit novitiate, Andrew White, the future
Apostle of Maryland, and Thomas Garnett, a future mar-
tyr, were passing their days of probation in prayer, pen-
ance and manual labors. As The O'Neill spent several
months on Mont-Cesar, and knowing him to be the great
Catholic hero of his time, we may take it for granted that
he often visited the exiled English priests, and that he
often saw the novices, White and Garnett. How proud
the old chieftain would have felt had the- future destiny of
these two young men been revealed to him !

30 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Father White began his novitiate on the first day of
February, 1607. Besides Garnett, Father White had for
a fellow-novice the illustrious Father Henry More, the
historian of the English Province and the great grandson
of the martyred Chancellor, Sir Thomas More. Among
confessors for the faith, among the descendants, the near
relatives of martyrs, the future Apostle of Maryland laid
the foundation of his religious perfection and caught the
flame that burned in his great heart as he traversed the
forests or sailed the rivers of the New World.

Father More faithfully described White's novice-home
as seated on high ground, commanding the whole city;
below was a walled garden, and on the slopes of the hill
pleasant walks among the vines, which were ranged in
terraces, and the whole, though within the city walls, as
quiet and calm as befitted a house of prayer.

Father White, say the Records of the English
Province, passed through the usual probationary exer-
cises of the noviceship with such satisfaction to his su-
periors that, at the end of two years, after taking first or
simple vows of religion, he was at once sent back to the
labors and dangers of the English Mission. Nor did he
disappoint the expectations formed of him, refusing his
labors to none, whether instructing Protestants in the
tenets of the Catholic faith, confirming Catholics in vir-
tue, or administering the sacraments, until he was called
by obedience into Spain, to labor in the colleges of the
English Province there. He was a man of transcendent
talents, and filled the offices of prefect of studies, profes-
sor of Sacred Scriptures, dogmatic theology, and He-
brew, both at Valladolid and Seville, with great applause,
and, as appears by the Catalogues of the English Prov-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 3 1

ince, had also filled other various responsible offices
of his Order, such as superior, minister, consultor, and
confessor. The editor of the Maryland Historical So-
ciety's pamphlet adds that he was afterwards professor of
divinity, first at Douay and then at Liege. The " Sum-
mary " of the deceased of the Province for the year 1656,
says of the Father that in these employments he gave
proof no less of his talents than of his virtues, excelling,
we may truly say, in both.

Inflamed with ardent zeal for the salvation of souls,
he again petitioned for, and obtained leave to be sent
back to the English Mission, where, by his anxious care
in the duties of a missionary, he was preparing himself
for a glorious death, so often the lot of the priest in those
cruel days of exterminating persecution ; when it pleased
God to call him to a more fruitful application of his labors
among the Gentiles, and to choose him as the first apostle
to carry the Gospel to the New World.

Justly has Father White been styled the Apostle of
Maryland. His evangelical career in that State, as well
among the white settlers as among the different Indian
tribes, may be pointed to by all Catholics as another
proof of the divine commission left to their church to
teach all nations, as a proof that the spirit that helped
and guided the apostles in their wondrous works has
ever lovingly abided with her missionaries. Father
White had all the grand characteristics of an apostle, of
a man sent of God. He was a teacher endowed with vast
learning, a priest who had attained a high degree of
sanctity. He was undaunted in the midst of labors,
pains, dangers, trials and persecutions. At least twice he
was seized by cruel bigots and cast into prison on account

32 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

of his devotion to our holy religion. His continual
austerities, even while confined in a miserable dungeon,
at Newgate, won the admiration and pity of his jailors.
His burning zeal knew no bounds, his living, practical
charity had no limits. In order to save men, in order to
win souls to Jesus Christ, he made himself all to all. He
labored among the settlers on the banks of the Potomac
and Patuxent Rivers, and down by the Chesapeake Bay,
with the same zeal, and fidelity, and joy with which he
taught at Seville and Valladolid, or worked for the greater
glory of God among the proscribed Catholics who sought
his spiritual aid even under the grim shadow of Lon-
don's black tower. As a fellow-novice of Father Thomas
Garnett, martyred at Tyburn; as a spiritual child of the
holy Father Robert Parsons, who knew so many dun-
geons for Christ's love ; as a confessor of the faith him-
self, he called with power and efficacy upon the Pilgrims
assembled in their wigwam chapel to love God above all
things, and to cling with reverence and affection to the
ancient and holy creed of England. But more especially
did this truly great and pious priest give undeniable
proofs of the apostolic fire that animated him when he
treated with the Indians.

The red men were his favorite children, his chosen peo-
ple. The salvation of these he desired with all the love
and ardor of his large, apostolic heart. No labors were
too heavy when endured for their sakes, no pains were
too acute when suffered in trying to lead them from dark-
ness to light, from error to truth, from Satan to God. He
sought them in their villages and on their hunts, in the
depths of their forests, and far out on the stormy waters.
He learned their difficult language that he might all the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 33

better enter into their feelings, learn their errors and their
wants, and lead them into the one true fold. He lost no
opportunity, no occasion, of instructing them in the prin-
cipal dogmas of faith, of preaching to them the Gospel
of Peace.

The Annual Letters of the English Province for the
year 1656, in recording the death of Father White, state
him to have been a man of many extraordinary virtues,
and relate that in his last illness he was for a long time
so excessively weak that his death was daily expected,
he kept often repeating : My hour is not yet come, nor
is St. John the Evangelist's day. This answer he would
always give to those who advised him to fortify his de-
parting soul with the last sacraments of the church. At
length, on the very feast of the " beloved disciple," at his
morning's meditation he heard these words interiorily
spoken to him : To-day thou shalt be with me. He
therefore bade those attending him to call a priest,
adding that he must come quickly, for, should there be
the least delay, he would be dead before he could receive
the last rites. Death, which quickly followed, proved
his words true, although when they were spoken there
was no more sign of approaching death than there had
been for a fortnight before. Father White spent the last
years of his life in the family of a Catholic nobleman,
and died on December 27th, 1656, in his seventy-ninth
year.

The gaoler of Newgate, in which Father White was
confined awaiting his trial and probable capital convic-
tion, noticing the rigorous fasts of the holy priest, said
one day to him : " If you treat your poor old body so
badly, you will not be strong enough to be taken to be

34 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

hanged at Tyburn." The Father replied: "It is this
very fasting which gives me strength enough to bear all
for the sake of Christ."

Father Nathaniel Southwell gives us the following
eulogium of Father White : " He was a man no less re-
markable for sanctity than for learning ; he would fre-
quently take only bread and water for his refection, and
defer even that meagre fare until evening. So great was
his humility that he voluntarily sought out occasion for
self-abjection. So patient was he under bodily sufferings
that although laboring under a long and most trouble-
some infirmity, yet was he never heard to utter a single
complaint, but, as far as was permitted him, he would
carry himself as one in good health, and in this point he
was an admirable counterfeiter. Finally, in all matters
of business whatever, in which he was engaged, there
seemed to be a certain air of sanctity inspired, so that
grave men were not wanting who declared that if they
had ever seen a living saint, most assuredly Father An-
drew White was the man."

The Annual Letter for 1639 gives the following inter-
esting details : There are in this mission four priests and
one coadjutor. All are working in places far distant, with
the hope, no doubt, of thus obtaining earlier acquaint-
ance with the native language and propogating more
widely the holy faith of the Gospel. Father John
Brock, the Superior, with a coadjutor brother, remains in
the plantation. Metapawnien, which was given us by
Maquacomen, the King of Patuxent, is a kind of store
house for this mission, whence most of our bodily
supplies are obtained. Father Philip Fisher lives
in the principal town of the colony, to which the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 35

name of St. Mary's has been given. Father John
Gravenor, lives in Kent Island, sixty miles distant.
Father Andrew White is at the still further distance of
one hundred and twenty miles, at Kittamaquindi, the
metropolis of Pascatoe, having lived since the month of
June, 1639, m tne palace with the King himself whom
they call Tayac.

The cause of the Father's going thither is as follows :
We had bestowed much time and labor in the work of
the conversion of the King of Patuxent, an event antici-
pated by us all, both from our recollections of kind-
nesses received — for he had given to the Society a farm,
as has been said — and because he was considered very
powerful among the barbarians, on account of his rep-
utation for wisdom and influence. -Some of his people
had become Catholics, and he appeared himself abund-
antly instructed in the first principles of the faith, when,
lo ! — in the inscrutable judgments of God — the unhappy
man at first procrastinated, then by degrees grew indif-
ferent, and at length openly broke off altogether from
the work he had commenced. Nor this only ; but he
also gave indications of an hostility against the whole
colony not to be misunderstood. Whereupon the
Governor, after prudent inquiries, determined, by the
advice of his council, that the Father should be recalled
from his position with the King, lest the barbarian might
give sudden proof of his perfidy and cruelty against him ;
and also, lest this hostage, as it were, being left in the
King's power, the Governor himself might find it diffi-
cult to revenge injuries, should the Patuxent at any time
declare himself an open enemy.

The conversion of Maquacomen being despaired of,

36 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Father Andrew betook himself to the Tayac of Pisca-
toway, who treated him very kindly at the first inter-
view, and became so attached to him that he afterwards
always held him in the greatest love and veneration, and
was unwilling that the Father should use any other hos-
pitality than that of his palace. Nor was the Queen
inferior to her husband in benevolence to their guest, for
with her own hands she was accustomed to prepare
meat for him and bake bread, and waited upon him with
equal care and attention.

Soon after the arrival of Father White the Tayac was
in danger of death from a serious disease, and, when
forty conjurors had in vain tried every remedy, the
Father by permission of the sick man administered as
medicine a certain powder of known efficacy mixed with
holy water, taking care to have him bled the day after
by a youth whom the Father always had with him.
After that the sick man began daily to grew better, and
soon after altogether recovered. Upon this he resolved
to be initiated as soon as possible into the Christian
faith, and both his wife and his two daughters along
with him, for as yet he had no male offspring. Father
White is now diligently engaged in their instruction,
and they are not slow in receiving the Catholic doctrine,
for through the light of heaven vouchsafed to them, they
have long since found out the errors of their former life.
The King has exchanged the skins, with which he was
before clothed, for a garment after the European fashion,
and he makes some little endeavor to learn our
language.

The Tayac is greatly delighted with spiritual con-
versation, and seems to esteem earthly wealth as nothing

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 2)7

in comparison with heavenly ; as he told the Governor,
to whom he was on a visit with Father White while he
was under instruction, and who was explaining to him
what great advantages could be enjoyed from the
English by a mutual exchange of wares. " Verily," he
said, " I consider all these things trifling when compared
with this one advantage — that through these mission-
aries I have arrived at the knowledge of the only true
God, than which there is nothing greater to me, nothing
which ought to be greater." Not long since, when he
held a convention of other rulers, in a crowded assembly
of the chiefs and a circle of common people, Father White
and some of the English being present, he publicly
declared it to be his advice, together with that of his
wife and children, that, abjuring the superstition of the
country, they should all embrace the profession and
practice of Christianity, for that the only true Deity is
He Whom the Christians worshipped, nor can the
immortal soul of man be otherwise saved from eternal
death ; stones and herbs, to which through blindness of
mind he and they had hitherto given Divine honors,
being the humblest things created by Almighty God for
the use and relief of human life. Having said this, he
cast from him a stone which he held in his hand, and
spurned it with his foot. A murmur of applause from
the people sufficiently indicated that they did not hear
these things with unfavorable ears. Thus there is the
strongest hope, that, when the family of the King is
purified by baptism, the conversion of the whole country
will speedily follow. In the meanwhile we heartily
thank God for the present happy prospect, and are
especially encouraged when we daily behold those idols

$8 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

to be the contempt of the natives which were lately
reckoned in the number of their deities.

To the hope of the Indian harvest are to be added also
no mean fruits reaped from the colony and its inhabitants,
to whom, on the principal festival days of the year,
sermons are preached, and catechetical instructions on
Sundays. Our labors are rewarded, for not only Cath-
olics come in crowds, but also many heretics, and this
year, twelve in all renouncing their former errors, have
been reconciled to God and the Church. Our Fathers
are daily occupied in their Divine work, and dispense
the sacraments to those who come, as often as circum-
stances demand. In fine, to those in health, to the sick,
to the afflicted and the dying, we strive to be in read-
iness to afford counsel, relief, and assistance of every
kind.

From the Annual Letter for 1640 we learn the follow-
ing facts : In the mission this year were four priests
and one coadjutor. We stated in our last letters what
hope we had conceived of converting the Tayac, or the
King of Pascatoe. In the meantime, such is the good-
ness of God, the result has not disappointed our expec-
tation, for he has become a Catholic, some others also
being brought over with him, and on July 5th, 1640, when
he was sufficiently instructed in the mysteries of the faith,
he was solemnly baptized in a little chapel, which, after
the manner of the Indians, he had erected out of bark
for that purpose and for Divine worship. At the same
time the Queen, and her infant, and others of the princi-
pal men whom he especially admitted to his councils, to-
gether with his little son, were regenerated in the bap-
tismal font. To the King, who was called Chitomacheu

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 39

before, was given the name of Charles ; to his wife that
of Mary. The others, on receiving the Christian faith,
had Christian names allotted to them. The Governor,
together with his Secretary, and many others, was present
at the ceremony, nor was anything omitted which could
help the display and which our means could supply.

In the afternoon the King and Queen were united in
matrimony after the Christian rite; then the great cross
was erected, in carrying which to its destined place the
King, the Governor, Secretary, and others, lent their
shoulders and hands ; two of us in the meantime — Fathers
White and Gravenor — chanted before them the Litany of
Loreto in honor of the Blessed Virgin. And not long
after, the same two Fathers, White and Gravenor, had to
bear by no light crosses of their own ; for Father White,
in performing the ceremonies of baptism, which were
somewhat long, had contracted fever from which he only
partially recovered, then suffered a relapse, and was ill
during the whole winter. Father Gravenor so completely
lost the use of his feet as to be unable to stand ; after
a little he too got better, though an abscess was afterwards
formed, which carried him off in the space of a few days,
upon November 5th, 1640. (He died at St. Mary's City,
and was buried in the graveyard there.)

A famine about this time prevailed among the Indians,
owing to the great drought of the past summer ; and
that we might not appear to neglect the bodies of those
for the care of whose souls we had made so long a voy-
age, though corn was sold at a great price, we considered
it necessary to relieve them to the utmost of our power.
Amidst these cares, and busied also in settling the affairs
of the mission, we passed the greater part of the winter.

40 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

On February 15th we came to Pascatoe, joyfully-
greeted by the inhabitants, who indeed seemed well in-
clined to receive the Christian faith. So that not long
after the King brought his daughter, seven years old,
whom he loved with great affection, to be educated among
the English at St. Mary's, and to be washed in the sacred
font of baptism ; she is beginning to understand the
Christian mysteries. One of his counsellors also, of whom
we have spoken before, desiring that the mercies of God
which he had experienced in his own case should be
brought to his people, earnestly prays that his wife and
children may be led to seek the waters of salvation, which
most pious desire, after suitable instruction, will, we hope,
by the favor of God, be gratified.

Another King, chief of the Anacostans, whose territory
is not far distant, is anxious to come and live as one of
us ; and from this it is evident that a rich harvest awaits
us, on which we may advantageously bestow our labor,
though it is to be feared that there will not be laborers
sufficient for gathering in the abundant fruits. There
are other villages lying near, which, I doubt not, would
run promptly and joyfully to the light of the Gospel truth,
if there was any one to impart to them the word of eter-
nal life. It is not, however, right for us to be too anxious
about others, lest we may seem to abandon prematurely
our present tender flock ; nor need those who are sent
out to assist us fear lest the means of life be wanting, for
He who clothes the lilies and feeds the fowls of the air,
will not leave those who are laboring to extend His king-
dom destitute of necessary sustenance.

Father Andrew suffered no little inconvenience from a
hard-hearted and troublesome captain of New England,

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 4 1

whom he had engaged to convey him and his effects, and
at whose hands he was, a little while after, in great dan-
ger of being either cast into the sea, or carried with all
his goods to New England, a place full of Puritan Cal-
vinists. Silently committing the affair to God, he at
length safely reached Potomac (commonly pronounced
Patemeak). Having cast anchor in this harbor, the ship
became so fast bound by a great quantity of ice that it
could not be moved for the space of seventeen days.
Walking on the ice, as though it were land, the Father
departed for the town, and when the ice was broken up,
the ship, driven and jammed by the force of its moving
fragments, was sunk, but the cargo was in a great mea-
sure recovered.

By this misfortune, Father White was detained in his
visits as long as seven weeks, for he found it necessary
to procure another ship from St. Mary's. But the spiritual
gain of souls readily compensated for his delay, since the
ruler of the little village, with the principal men amongst
its inhabitants, was, during that time added to the Church,
and received the faith of Christ through baptism. Be-
sides these persons, one was converted along with many
of his friends ; a third brought his wife, his son, and a
friend ; and a fourth, in like manner, came together with
another of no ignoble standing among his people.
Strengthened by their example, the people are prepared
to receive the faith whenever we shall have leisure to in-
struct them.

Not long after a young empress (as they call her at
Pascataway) was baptized in the town of St. Mary's, and
is now being educated there, having already become a
proficient in the English language. Almost at the same

42 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

time the town named Portobacco, to a great extent re-
ceived the faith along with baptism. This town, from its
situation on the river Pamac (the inhabitants call it Pa-
make), almost in the centre of the Indians, and the con-
venience of making excursions from it in all directions,
we have determined to make our residence ; the more so
because we fear that we may be compelled to abandon
Pascataway, on account of its proximity to the Susque-
hannoes, which nation is the most hostile to the Chris-
tians.

An attack having been recently made on a settlement
of ours, they slew the men whom we had there, and car-
ried away our goods, to our great loss.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 43

CHAPTER II.

Father White was ably assisted in all his early under-
takings by Father John Altham, vere Gravenor, and
Father Timothy Hays, alias Hanmer.

Father Altham was a native of Warwickshire, England,
and was born in the year 1589. He was enrolled among
the sons of St. Ignatius in 1623. Before coming to
Maryland he zealously served the missions in the Devon
and London Districts.

Father Hays was born in Dorsetshire, in England, in
1584. Being already raised to the dignity of the priest-
hood, he entered a Jesuit Novitiate in 16 17. For a long
time he was engaged in missionary life in London, where
he was exposed to a thousand daily dangers.

From the " Annual Letters" we learn many interesting
details concerning the labors of the missionaries, and
their mode of life. Thus we learn, that they made many
excursions, not only by land, but also by water. One of
the Fathers, writing in 1640 says : We have to content
ourselves with missionary excursions, of which we have
made many this year by ascending the river they call
Patuxent, where some fruit has been gained in the con-
version of the young Queen of the town, that takes its
name from the river there, and her mother ; also the
young Queen of Portobacco ; the wife and two sons of
Tayac the Great, as they call him, who died last year, and

44 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

of one hundred and thirty others besides. The following
is our manner of making these excursions. The Father
himself, his interperter, and a servant, set off in a pinnace
or galley — two are obliged to propel the boat with oars,
when the wind fails or is adverse ; the third steers. We
take with us a supply of bread, butter, cheese, corn cut
and dried before it is ripe, beans and a little flour ; in
another chest we carry bottles, one of which contains
wine for the altar, in six others is blessed water for the
purpose of Baptism ; a box holds the sacred utensils, and
we have a table as an altar for saying Mass. A third
chest is full of trifles, which we give to the Indians to
gain their goodwill — such as little bells, combs, fishing-
hooks, needles, thread and other things similar. We
have a little tent also for camping in the open air, as we
frequently do ; and we use a larger one when the weather
is stormy and wet. The servants carry other things
which are necessary for hunting, and for cooking pur-
poses.

In our excursions we endeavor, as much as we can,
to reach some English house or Indian village, failing
in this we land, the Father moors the boat fast to the
shore, then collects wood and makes a fire, while the two
others, meantime go off hunting. If, unfortunately, no
game can be found, we refresh ourselves with the provis-
ions we have brought, and lie down by the fire to take
our rest. When rain threatens we erect our hut and
spread a large mat over it ; nor, praise be to God, do we
enjoy this humble fare and hard couch with less content
than if we had the" more luxurious provisions of Europe.
To comfort us God gives us a foretaste of what He will one
day grant to those who labor faithfully in this life, and

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 45

mitigates all our hardships by imparting a spirit of cheer-
fulness, for His Divine Majesty appears to be present
with us in an extraordinary manner.

The Annual Letters also tell us how the Fathers
preached in the forests to the Indians, how they baptized
Princes and Princesses, and united in the holy bonds of
matrimony red Kings and Queens. During epidemics
and famines the missionaries showed in an especial man-
ner to the unhappy Indians the beauty of Christian,
white-robed charity, and the fruits of apostolic zeal. On
more than one occasion the cross of the missioner was the
means of working some stupendous miracle that caused
the red warriors to make the woods ring with their
shouts of "glory to the wondrous God of the Christians."

Brother Thomas Gervase rendered important service
to the missionaries, and though only engaged in waiting
on the Fathers, and attending as far as he could under
the circumstances to their temporal wants, fully shared
in the merit of their holy labors, and must ever partici-
pate in the glory of their undertakings. This devoted
man was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1590. Thirty-
four years afterwards he entered the Society of Jesus as
a Temporal Coadjutor. From Catalogues we learn that,
in 1625, he was a novice in the London Novitiate, Clerk-
enwell. It seems that after his vows of religion he still
remained in the same house, for four years later on we
find him still in the same place. In 1633 he is mentioned
as being employed in humble and useful duties in the
Lancashire District. " It is very probable," says the
Collectanea, " that he is identical with Thomas Latham,
the housekeeper at Clerkenwell, mentioned in the report
of the discovery of that Residence by the Pursuivants of

46 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

the Privy Council in 1628, and committed with the rest
to prison." Brother Gervase died of the yellow-fever, in
the August or September of 1637. The Annual Let-
ter for that year says, that "after enduring severe toils
for the space of five years with the greatest patience,
humility and ardent love, he was seized by the disease
prevalent at the time, and happily exchanged this wretched
life for that which is eternal."

Father Timothy Hays returned to England about the
year 1636. That year two other missionaries arrived in
Maryland, ^Fathers John Rogers, alias Bampfield, and
John Wood. This last-named Father did not remain
many months in the Maryland Mission, perhaps on ac-
count of ill-health.

Father Rogers was the son of an Esquire, and was
born at Feltham, near Frome, County Wilts, in England,
about the year 1584. Feltham was his father's seat. He
was brought up as a Protestant, but having been taken to
the Douay College by Father Bray of the Society, he
was converted to the true Faith. He entered the English
College, at Rome, in 1604. The following extract is
taken from the diary of that College: " 1604. John
Rogers, of Somerset, near the town of Frome, aged
twenty, not yet confirmed, came from Douay with Wil-
liam Worthington and Dingley (Morgan). On account
of his weak health, his admission to the College was de-
ferred until the beginning of the following year, when he
was admitted among the alumni on January 1, 1605, and
took the usual College oaths on the 10th of August fol-
lowing. Having completed his philosophy and theology,
he left the College April 21, 161 1, and entered the So-
ciety. On entering the College he made the following

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES! 47

statement : ' My name is John Rogers. I am twenty
years of age, and was born in a village called Feltham,
the property of my father, near the town of Frome, in
Somersetshire. I received the rudiments of education in
various places, but mostly in a town in Wiltshire, called
Heytesbury, where I studied humanities for seven years.
Thence, at my father's wish, I went to Oxford, where I
lived half a year in Oriel College. After this I remained
at home idle for nearly two years, when a soldier named
Richard Diar, of the King's body-guard, came to my
father's house, and asked him if he was willing that I
should enter the service of the son of Lord Harrington,
who was Lord-in-Waiting to the Prince. The soldier,
having heard my father's wishes, turning to me asked if
I was agreeable. 'On one special condition,' I said
(meaning that I should preserve my religion). ' Thou
wilt be pure in religion/ he replied (thinking I favored
Puritanism). ' I refused his offer. At length my uncle,
Lord Stourton, asked my father what he could do for
me, and proposed my entering the service of his wife,
the Lady Stourton. To this my father assented and
committed me to her charge ; and when I had spent a
year there, by chance I met a very aged priest, named
Father Bray, who had lived ten years at Douay, and by
whose means I was made a Catholic, and I then crossed
over, not without difficulty, to Douay. My father is an
Esquire, living upon his own estate ; I have only one
brother and sister, and myself, the eldest. I have many
relatives, some of them Catholics. My father is still a
schismatic, and I, myself, was always so until my con-
version by the above-named aged priest.' "

In 1624 Father Rogers was a missioner in the College

4$ OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

of St. Thomas of Canterbury. In 1655 he was at Watten,
then being seventy-two years of age, having spent forty-
four in the Society and thirty-four upon the mission. He
died at St. Omer's College, on August 7th, 1657.

The summary of the deceased members of the English
Province for 1657, thus notices this Father: "Father
John Rogers, a learned man, and a very sharp defender
of our Francis Suarez. Being translated to the novitiate
of Watten in his declining years, he spent much time in
prayer, either in his private chamber or else before the
Blessed Sacrament in the Church. He was visiting the
College of St. Omer by way of recreation, and appeared
in perfect health, but was found in the morning dead, yet
modestly composed in bed, on the 7th of this month o r
September." Father Rogers was, with other Jesuit
Fathers, sent into banishment in 16 18, under the name
of John Bampfield. According to Father Edmund Coffin,
Father Rogers publicly defended theses of philosophy
(metaphysics) with Father John Port (Layton) in Rome.
In Brother Foley's sketch of the College of St. Thomas,
of Canterbury, we read : " Besides Father Baldwin, eleven
of the English Fathers of the Society passed under the
charge of the good Count Gondomar into exile : Ralph
Bickley, Richard Bartiet, John Bampfield {vere John
Rogers), Alexander Fairclough, John Falconer, Henry
Hawkins, John Sweetman, Francis Wallis, Laurence
Worthington, Francis Young and William York. Most
of these returned to England to resume their arduous
labors, braving alike the dangers of recapture and of cer-
tain death if caught."

From some cause or other Father Rogers was not al-
lowed to spend his life in working on the Maryland Mis-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 49

sion. About 1638 he was recalled to England. One year
or two before his return, however, the Mission was in-
creased by the arrival of two new Jesuits, Father Thomas
Copley, alias Philip Fisher, and Father John Knowles.

Father Knowles was a native of Staffordshire, and was
born in 1607. He entered the Society at the age of sev-
enteen. He did not last much more than six weeks in
the Mission. The Annual Letters say of him that though
young he " possessed remarkable qualities of mind, which
gave great promise for the future. He had scarcely spent
two months in this Mission, when, to the great grief of
all of us, he was carried off by the sickness so general
in the colony." The Letters add that " none of the three
'emaining priests have entirely escaped, yet we have not
ceased to labor to the best of our ability among the
neighboring people."

In the Colonial records of Maryland we find frequent
allusions made to Thomas Copley, Esq. That this gen-
tleman was held in high esteem in Lord Baltimore's new
colony, no one of the numerous writers who incidentally
refer to him ever seems to doubt. He was more than
once invited to take a place at the council-board of the
legislators of Maryland. In January, 1637, he was sum-
moned to the " General Assembly held at St. Marie's
City," but " Robert Clerke, gent., appeared for him, and
excused his absence by reason of sickness." From stray
notes found in the " Annals of Annapolis " we learn that
he was on intimate terms of friendship w r ith some of the
"two hundred gentlemen adventurers" who, in 1633,
sailed from England as passengers of the Dove and Ark.
Yet, strange to say, up to a recent date his character and
profession were involved in much mystery. Most of our

50 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Catholic authors rightly surmised, from his association
with Father White, that he must have been a Jesuit mis-
sionary. But they could give very little more information
concerning him. Not a few Protestant historians boldly
asserted that he was an accomplished agent in the secret
service of the sons of Loyola. Sebastian F. Streeter, how-
ever, who had access to some reliable documents, says :
" Notwithstanding his title of ' Esquire,' Mr. Copley was
a Jesuit priest." What rendered Copley still more mys-
terious, was the fact, that the Maryland Jesuits, in their
reports, or Annual Letters, never even once made men-
tion of him. With no small degree of satisfaction, we
shall now trace as far as we can, the career of one who.
has long puzzled historians, and much of whose history;
has up to these times, been hidden under the assumed
name of Philip Fisher.

Father Thomas Copley was born at Madrid, in Spain,
about the year 1594. His grandfather, Lord Thomas
Copley, Baron of Welles, was son of Sir Roger Copley,
of Gatton, in Surrey, and of Elizabeth Shelley, sister to
Sir William Shelley, the last English Lord Prior of St.
John of Jerusalem. Lord Thomas had to go into exile
on account of his steadfastness in the faith, and had
much to suffer from the enemies of the old religion. He
had to sustain great losses, though he had married one
of Sir John Lutterel's daughters — an heir of blood royal.
On his mother's side, Father Copley had also a distin-
guished ancestry. His mother, Margaret Prideaux, was
the granddaughter of Margaret Giggs, " a gentleman's
daughter of Norfolk," who appears by Margaret Roper's
side in Holbein's famous picture of Sir Thomas More's
family. The great Chancellor thus referred to Margaret

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 5 I

Giggs in his last letter: " I send now my good daughter
Clement, her algorism-stone, and send her and my god-
son, and all her's, God's blessing and mine." Margaret
Giggs, or as she was known after marriage, Mrs. Clement,
was a heroic Christian woman. While the Charterhouse
monks were in prison, having bought over the gaoler,
she daily visited them in their cells. To do this the
more securely, she disguised herself as a milk-maid, and
carried on her head a basket, which contained meat for
the poor captives. Suspicion being aroused, and the
gaoler growing afraid of a fatal discovery, she was at
length refused permission to enter the prison. But by
her importunity and presents, she obtained the gaoler's
consent to ascend the roof, and through it, to give some
little help to the holy confessors who were bound hand
and foot to posts. Mrs. Clement, on account of the
growing persecutions in England, retired to the Low
Countries— forsaking, for love of conscience, country,
living and rents. She died at Mechlin, and her body
was laid to rest behind the main altar of St. Rumold's
Cathedral. Several of her children survived her. One
of her daughters, Winifred, married Sir William Rastall,
nephew and biographer of Sir Thomas More. Another
daughter was the holy and gifted Mother Clement,
Prioress of the Augustinian Nuns of St. Ursula, Louvain.
Helen, a third daughter, married Thomas Prideaux, of
Devonshire. Of this couple was born Magdalen, an only
daughter. This young lady passed a great part of her
early life in the peaceful cloister of St. Ursula, Louvain,
under the protection and guidance of some of England's
noblest daughters. " She had education to many rare
qualities, for she was a fine musician, both in song and

52 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

instruments, had the Latin tongue perfect, also poetry,
and was skillful in the art of painting ; a woman, indeed,
wise, of good judgment, and pious in godly matters." This
accomplished woman was destined to be the mother of
the subject of this sketch.

William Copley, the future husband of Magdalen
Prideaux, " coming into England " after the death of
Lord Thomas, his father, " to enjoy his inheritance, being
not twenty-one years of age, and finding that to pass the
Court of Wards, he must take the oath of supremacy,
not having, as yet, experience how to escape that danger
as others do, determined rather than commit such an of-
fence against Almighty God, to venture the loss of all
his land for his lifetime, so that he might enjoy freedom
of his conscience. Wherefore, behold in this resolution
this constant youth, most loyal to God, letteth forth all
his leases for small rents, taking fines in the place, so
maketh a good sum of money, and over the sea he comes
with one trusty servant, and goeth into Spain, where God
ordained that he got a pension in respect that his father's
worthiness had been well known to strangers." While
in Spain, William Copley met Magdalen Prideaux, and
took her as his wife.

" In the meantime," says St. Monica s Chronicle, " the
Queen seized upon William Copley's living, and gave it
away to a cousin-german of his that lived in her Court,
named Sir William Lane, so that for seventeen years the
said William Copley enjoyed not one penny of his estate,
but having four children by his marriage, two daughters
and two sons, he maintained them only by his pension.
At the coming of the Infanta with Albert, the Archduke
of Austria, to be princes of these Low Countries, he got

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 53

his pension transferred into these quarters, for to be
nearer home, and so came to live in these Low Coun-
tries."

When Thomas Copley had reached his ninth year, he
went with his parents to reside at the ancestral seat at
Gatton. Of his boyhood years in England I find noth-
ing recorded. It is almost certain, however, that he
received his early education, both secular and religious,
from some proscribed priest, who acted as chaplain in
his paternal home. The influence of his own family
must have, at an early hour, turned his thoughts toward
spiritual things, while the story of all that his heroic pro-
genitors had endured for the cause of the ancient religion
of England, must have aroused his enthusiasm, and kin-
dled in his young soul the fire of high and generous
resolves. The stern laws against Catholic education in
England forced him to proceed to the Continent to pur-
sue his higher studies. As his fathers had gone into
exile for the sake of their religion, he now went forth into
a strange land for the love of knowledge. In 161 1, we
find him among the students of philosophy at the famous
University of Louvain. About one year previous, his
two sisters, Mary and Helen, had entered St. Monica's
convent in the classic city by the Dyle. These were ac-
complished and brave girls — worthy descendants of
Margaret Giggs. On their way through Southwark
they were examined by a Justice of the Peace, and boldly
professed their faith, and refused to go to a Protestant
church, " because they would not be dissemblers ; to be
in their minds of one religion, and make a show of
another." While young Copley pursued his philoso-
phical studies under some of the most distinguished pro-

54 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

fessors of Europe, then at Louvain, we may feel certain
that he did not fail to practice those virtues which ren-
der a soul pleasing to its Maker. Perhaps, even then
he envied the lot of those brave missionaries, who faced
the axe and block in the heart of London. We cannot
think that he read of the fate of his kinsman, the holy
and gifted, and gentle Robert Southwell, without a strong
feeling of emulation. At all events, a time came, when
he was in the flush and pride of young manhood, when
he heard an interior voice that called him away from the
vanities of life, that called him to take up his cross and
walk in the footprints of his Master. Did he pause, or
waver, or grow faint-hearted as many a young man has
done when called to a life of penance, mortification and
trials? Did he look with terror on the death that, per-
haps, awaited him ? No, the blood of confessors of the
faith, the blood of martyrs ran through his veins, and
filled his heart. With a light step and beaming eye, he
climbed up the stony stairs that led to St. John's
Novitiate, on Mont-Cesar, Louvain, and asked to be
enrolled among the sons of St. Ignatius, who were there
preparing themselves in prayer and mortification for the
death mission in England.

When the English Jesuits were driven from their own
country, in 1607, they rented a house on Mont-Cesar,
Louvain, and used it as a Novitiate. This Novitiate was
opened by the illustrious Father Parsons, in the same
year, with six priests, two scholastics, and five lay-broth-
ers. Already one of its novices, Father Thomas Garnett,
had shed his blood for the faith. It had sheltered, too,
among its novices, Father Andrew White, the future
"Apostle of Maryland," and Father Henry More, the his-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 55

torian of the English Jesuit Province, and the great
grandson of Sir Thomas More. To this school of martyrs
and apostles young Copley begged to be admitted, and
was received, and welcomed as a worthy son. He had
Father John Gerard as his novice-master. This holy and
remarkable priest had had a career of thrilling and roman-
tic interest. It has been said by a recent writer, that his
life " is equal to anything which has been published since
the days of Defoe." His prison-life, his manifold and
skillful disguises, his escapes from spies and priest-hunters,
his stolen visits to the faithful nobility and peasants, form
a cfiapter in history which is stranger than any fiction.

After two years of novitiate, Thomas Copley bound
himself forever to the service of God by the holy vows
of religion. Having completed his theological studies at
Louvain, he was raised to the dignity of the priesthood.
Though on his entrance into religion, he assumed the
alias Philip Fisher, we prefer still to call him by his real
name, and so we note that soon after his ordination Father
Copley was sent on the English Mission. From Gee's
strange composition, The Foot out of the Snare, we learn
that, in 1624, he was once again in the land of his fore-
fathers. " Father Copley, Junior, one that hath newly
taken orders and come from beyond the seas," is in Lon-
don. The life of Father Copley in England, was replete
with pain and peril. There were men in London, at that
period, who lived by hunting down priests and religions.
Heartless spies were found everywhere. They loitered
around inns, hung around the castles and manors of
Catholic gentlemen, and ferreted out monks and friars
from the most secret quarters. It was a hard task for
Jesuits, even beneath their strangest costumes, and in

$6 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

their most diverse pseudo-avocations, to escape these
wretches. It was in that same year of 1624, that Father
Henry Morse, on his arrival in England, in quest of
souls, was captured and cast into York Castle, in which
he suffered from severe hunger and cold for the space of
three years. This same zealous priest was, after some
years, again taken prisoner and condemned to death. His
body was divided into quarters, and exposed on four of
the city gates, and his head affixed on London Bridge.

Father Copley was in England during the excitement
and troubles which were created by that bugbear — The
Clerkemvell Discovery. He may, indeed, have been one
of those Jesuits who were at that time thrown into prison
through the machinations of Sir John Cooke. Father
Thomas Poulton, his kinsman, was one of the priests
who were committed to the new prison. That Copley's
life and liberty were in continual danger, is evident to
every one acquainted with the history of the times of
which we speak. Doubtless it was owing to great dan-
gers and troubles that he, through the influence of pow-
erful friends in Court, obtained from the King the follow-
ing document :

" Whereas, Thomas Copley, gentle? nan, an alien, is a re-
cusant, and may be subject to be troubled for his religion ;
and forasmuch as we are zuell satisfied of the conditions and
qualities of the said Thomas Copley, and of his loyalty a?id
obedience towards us, we hereby will and require you, and
every one of you, whom it may concern, to permit the said
Thomas Copley, freely atid quietly, to attend in any place,
and go about, and foil (nv his occupation ivithout molestation,
or troubling him by any means whatsoever for matters of

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 57

religion, or the persons or places of those unto whom lie
shall resort, and this shall be your warrant in his behalf.
Given at our palace of Westminster, the $th day of Decem-
ber, in the ioth year of our reign (1633)."

Though Father Copley did not sail for the New Con-
tinent for three years after the Dove and Ark had entered
the Potomac, and the " First Mass " had been offered on
St. Clement's Island, still it is likely that from the very
beginning he took a deep interest in the Maryland expe-
dition. Lord Baltimore had obtained Jesuits, as we have
already seen, to attend to the inhabitants of his new set-
tlement, as well as to the red men who dwelt on the
Patuxent River, and along the shores of the Chesapeake.
The superior business capacities of Father Copley must
have been utilized by Father White and the Catholic
colonists before they spread out their sails off the beau-
tiful Isle of Wight. But soon he was called upon to take
a more active part in the Catholic colony. In 1636, un-
der the alias of Philip Fisher, he was appointed Superior
of the Maryland Mission. On arriving in the new field
of his labor, he took up his residence at St. Mary's City,
the ancient capital of Maryland. The wigwam of an
Indian chief, which Father White had converted into a
chapel, served him as a place of Divine Service. Through
the prudence and zeal of Father Copley, great piety, fer-
vor, and peace soon reigned among the inhabitants of St.
Mary's. Many of the leading gentlemen there made the
Spiritual Exercises, according to the method of St. Igna-
tius, and became exemplary Catholics. "As for the
Catholics," says the Annual Letter for 1639, " the atten-
dance on the sacraments here is so large, that it is not

58 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

greater among the faithful in Europe, in proportion to
their numbers. The most ignorant have been catechized,
and catechetical lectures have been delivered to the more
advanced every Sunday; on feast-days they have been very
rarely left without a sermon. The sick and the dying,
who were numerous this year, and dwelt far apart, have
been assisted in every way, so that not a single person
has died without the sacraments. We have buried very
many, but we have baptized a greater number."

In 1638, Father Ferdinand Poulton, aliases John Brock
and Morgan, was appointed Superior of the Missions in
place of his kinsman, Father Copley. The following
year Copley was again named Superior, and resided at
St. Mary's City. Father Poulton lived with the Pro-
prietary, at Mattapany, on the Patuxent ; Father John
Altham on Kent Island, and Father Andrew White in
the palace of the Indian king, whom they called Tayac,
at Piscataway, on the Potomac, almost opposite Mount
Vernon.

Father Copley had, to a great extent, to confine his
labors, at least for some years, to the English settlers at
the capital of the Province. Most of the Protestants
who came from England, in 1638, were converted by
him. " To Father Philip Fisher," says the Annual Let-
ter for 1640, " now residing at St. Mary's, the capital of
the colony, nothing would have been more agreeable
than to labor in the Indian harvest, if he had been per-
mitted by his superiors, who could not, however, dis-
pense with his services. Yet his goodwill is not left
without its rewards, for while those among the Indians,
of whom we have spoken, are being cleansed in the
waters of baptism, as many are, at the same time,

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 59

brought back from heretical depravity into the bosom
of the Church by his active industry."

In the course of time Father Copley began to make
excursions through the country for many miles around
St. Mary's. With true zeal he labored for all the settlers
and the Catholic Indians, who lived between St. Mary's
City and Charles County. In wills and other legal doc-
uments I trace his footsteps in places far apart. At Cal-
verton Manor, which stood at the head of the Wicomico,
he was always a welcome guest. The proprietor, the
Hon. Robert Clerke, loved and esteemed him for his
many virtues and shining qualities. At Calverton Manor
the zealous missionary occupied a chamber which was
known as " The Priest's Room." At the head of St.
Clement's Bay he gathered his flock at the hospitable
home of Luke Gardiner, who owned a farm there of
about two hundred acres. The distinguished Governor,
Thomas Green, seems to have had a special regard for
him. This gentleman gave him several presents for the
benefit of his Church. Cuthbert Fenwick, one of the
grand old Catholic founders of St. Mary's, was his inti-
mate friend, and acted for a long time as his trustee.
Few names in Maryland history shine with a brighter
lustre than Cuthbert Fenwick. " Mr. Fenwick was one,"
says the Protestant author of the Day-Star, " who
breathed the spirit of Copley, of Cornwallis, and of Cal-
vert."

Without having passed through the red fire of perse-
cution, a glory would be wanting to the early mis-
sionaries of Maryland, which is never wanting to truly
apostolic men. Without their having suffered for jus-
tice' sake, we should miss a halo from their heads,

60 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

which is never missing from the heads of the heroic fol-
lowers of the Victim of Calvary. Early, indeed, did the
light and glory of persecution shine round about the
apostles of Maryland. As the Parliamentary party grew
strong in England, so did the violence and intolerance
of the Puritans increase wherever the British flag was
raised. Even from the very beginning the missionaries
and the Catholics in general began to suffer in Southern
Maryland from the bigotry and Pope-hatred of the Pro-
testants of Virginia and the " saints " of New England,
who were invited to take a peaceful abode among them.
Not much more than a decade of years after that mem-
orable day on which Father White, amid hymns and
prayers, planted the rude cross on Heron Is'and, " he
was seized by some of the English invaders from Vir-
ginia, -the avowed enemies of civil and religious liberty,
and carried off a prisoner to London." Father Copley
was taken with Father White and sent back to England
in irons. Thus was the seal of a true apostleship put
upon his devotedness and labors.

" In 1645," say the Annual Letters, "the civil war was
raging in all the counties of England with the most
Savage cruelty on the part of the Parliamentary rebel
soldiers, universally against Catholics. Not a few of the
Society were seized and committed to prison. It ex-
tended even to Maryland, where some heretical zealots,
to curry favor with the Parliament, carried off two of our
Fathers, viz : Andrew White and Philip Fisher, whose
family name was ' Cappicius.' Both were brought to
England and tried, but acquitted on urging that they had
not entered England of their own accord, but had been
forcibly and illegally brought thither. Father Fisher

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 6 1

boldly returned to Maryland, but Father White was
not allowed to do so on account of his advanced age,
and he died a few years later in England."

Where Father Copley spent the interval between 1645
and 164S, I know not. Certain it is that he did not
return to America before 1648. Perhaps he worked
secretly on the mission in England, or probably he re-
sided in some Jesuit house on the old continent. The
following letter, addressed to the General of his Order,
Father Vincent Caraffa, gives an account of his arrival
in Maryland, and we trust is interesting enough to be
reproduced in full :

Our Very Rev. Father in Christ : — At length my
companion and myself reached Virginia, in the month of
January, after a tolerable journey of seven weeks ; there
I left my companion, and availed myself of the opportu-
nity of proceeding to Maryland, where I arrived in the
course of February. By the singular providence of
God, I found my flock collected together, after they had
been scattered for three long years ; and they were really
in more nourishing circumstances than those who had
oppressed and plundered them. With what joy they
received me, and with what delight I met them, it would
be impossible to describe, but they received me as an
Angel of God. I have now been with them a fortnight,
and am preparing for the painful separation ; for the
Indians summon me to their aid, and they have been
ill-treated by the enemy since I was torn from them. I
hardly know what to do, but cannot attend to all. God
grant that I may do His will for the greater glory of His
Name. Truly, flowers appear in our land ; may they

62 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

attain to fruit. A road by land, through the forest, has
just been opened from Maryland to Virginia ; this will
make it but a two days' journey, and both countries can
now be united in one mission. After Easter I shall wait
on the Governor of Virginia on momentous business,
may it terminate to the praise and glory of God. My
companion, I trust, still lies concealed, but I hope will
soon commence his labors under favorable auspices.
Next year I trust to have two or three other colleagues,
with the permission of your Paternity, to whose prayers
and sacrifices I earnestly commend this mission, myself,
and all mine.

Dated from Maryland this ist March in the year of
God, 1648.

I remain your Very Rev. Paternity's most unworthy
servant and son in Christ,

Philip Fisher.

Though Father Copley had much to suffer from per-
secution on the part of the Puritans, and also from pirates
and desperadoes like Ingle and Claiborne, who disturbed
the peace of Lord Baltimore's colonists, still it is proba-
ble that after his return to Maryland he found tranquility
around him. In 1649 the g reat Toleration Act was
passed, and all were free to worship God according to
the dictates of their conscience.

Father Copley died in 1653. The manner and place
of his death are unknown. He sleeps his long sleep,
perhaps, in the little burial ground at St. lingoes', but
his grave is a secret unknown to man, and so remains
unmarked by cross or stone. Thus mystery in death,
as well as in life, hangs around this scion of the Copleys.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 63

Yet not in vain has this devoted priest lived and died.
His wigwam-chapel is replaced in many an American
city by magnificent churches and marble cathedrals ; his
little flock has increased to millions ; the persecutions he
endured have helped to win freedom of conscience for
whole peoples ; the flowers that he saw bloom have long
since attained to fruit — rich and abundant. A grand and
flourishing Church has sprung up in fields that he wa-
tered with his tears. Though no one can point out his
grave in the lonely " God's Acre " of Southern Mary-
land, it is a consolation to us to remember that his bones
rest in a soil over which a white harvest is now ready for
the sickle.

64 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

CHAPTER III.

In 1638, Father Ferdinand Poulton, alias John Brock,
arrived in Maryland and became Superior of the Mission.
He was a pious and devoted priest.

The Poulton family had several of its members in the
Society. Father Ferdinand (whose name in confirma-
tion was John), alias John Brooks, or Brock, alias Mor-
gan, was the son of Francis Poulton and Ann Morgan.
In the Maryland catalogue he appears as John Brock
(vere Morgan). He had an uncle named Ferdinand
Poulton who was at one time a member of the Society,
but left about 1623, and was known in England under
the alias of John Morgan. The Father Ferdinand Poul-
ton of Maryland was born in Buckinghamshire in 1601
or 1603 ; ne was educated at St. Ome'r's and entered the
English College at Rome for higher studies in 1 619 as
John Brookes, aged 18 ; he entered the Society in 1622.
He was at St. Omer's in 1633, at Watten 1636; was Su-
perior in Maryland under the alias of John Brock for
several years, beginning with 1638. In 1640 (19th Sep-
tember) Governor Calvert specially summoned him as
Ferdinand Poulton, Esquire, of St. Mary's County, to the
Assembly. He was accidentally shot while crossing the
St. Mary's River, June 5, 1641, says an old catalogue,
though Br. Foley has July 5th. Father Poulton was
professed of the four vows, December 8, 1635.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 65

There seems to have been a great intimacy between
the Calverts and Poultons. I find that William Poulton
alias Sachervall, a secular priest and brother of Father
Ferdinand, was chaplain to Mary Lady Somerset, a
daughter of Lord Arundell of Wardour, and sister-in-
law to Cecil Calvert Lord Baltimore.

We are glad to be able to give a part of a most inter-
esting and edifying letter from 'the pen of poor Father
Ferdinand Poulton, written only a few weeks before his
sad death occurred. After giving some details, most of
which are already given in the Annual Letters above
cited, Father Poulton continues : " However, shortly
after our arrival Father White again fell sick, and has not
yet recovered his strength ; and indeed I fear that from
his age, and increasing infirmities, nature will shortly
succumb to such great labors. I will use my utmost
endeavors to preserve his life, that this great work of
God, the conversion of so many infidels, may prosper-
ously and. happily progress, as well because he possesses
the greatest influence over their minds, as that he, best of
any of the rest, understands and speaks their language.
Many of the inhabitants are instructed for baptism, and
many of the higher ranks show themselves inclined to-
wards the Christian faith, amongst whom the chief is the
King of the Anacostans, uncle of King Patorieck. A
few months ago King Pascatoway sent his daughter, who
is to succeed him in his dominions, to the town of St.
Mary, that she may be there educated among the Eng-
lish and instructed for baptism. Indeed, I hope, by the
favor of God, unless our helpers fail, that in a short time
there will be a great accession to the Christian faith in
these barbarous nations. And this, although on account

66 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

of the dearness of corn and the increased expenses and
deficiency of living, we are pressed by great difficulties ;
nor are there here in this colony any who are either able
or willing to furnish us with alms, and Divine Providence
shows that neither by our own exertions, nor of those
for whose salvation we labor, be they Christians or Pa-
gans can we hope for support. However, we have no
fear but that He will provide us with necessaries, Who
feeds the birds of the air that neither sow nor reap, and
Who suppliest the Apostles, whom He sent forth without
staff or scrip to preach the Gospel, with everything need-
ful; for the same reason He also of His Divine Provi-
dence will see fit to supply His unworthy servants with
means of sustentation. The very thought in the Prefect
of recalling us, or of not sending others to help us in
this glorious work of the conversion of souls, in a cer-
tain manner takes away faith in the Providence of God
and His care of His servants, as though He would now
less provide for the nourishment of His laborers than
formerly. On which account our courage is not dimin-
ished, but rather increased and strengthened ; since now
God will take us into His protection, and will certainly
provide for us Himself, especially since it has pleased the
Divine Goodness already to receive some fruit however
small of our labors. In whatever manner it may seem
good to His Divine Majesty to dispose of us, may His
holy Will be done. But, as much as in me lies, I would,
rather, laboring in the conversion of the Indians, expire
on the bare ground, deprived of all human succor and
perishing of hunger, than once think of abandoning this
holy work of God from the fear of want. May God
errant me grace to render Him some service, and all the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 6y

rest I leave to His Divine Providence. King Pascatoway
lately died most piously. But God will for his sake, as
we hope, quickly raise up seed for us in his neighboring
King Anacostin, who has invited us to come to him, and
has decided himself to become a Christian. Many like-
wise in other localities desire the same. Hopes of a rich
harvest shine forth, unless frustrated by the want of
laborers who can speak the language and are in sound
health."

Father Roger Rigby, alias Robert Knowles, of
whom we have already said a few words, came to Mary-
land in 1641. This missionary was a native of Lan-
cashire, England, and was born in the year 1608.
Having attained his twenty-first year he entered the
Jesuit Novitiate at Watten. He was raised to the
sublime dignity of the Priesthood in the year 1638, and
was then, we believe, sent to labor in England.

1642. In the mission of Maryland for the year just
elapsed, we have had only three priests, and of these one
was confined by sickness for three months. This was
Father Roger Rigby — the other two being Father Philip
Fisher, Superior of the mission, and Father Andrew
White ; all three were sent to different parts for the pur-
pose of collecting more spiritual fruit. The Superior,
Father Fisher, remained principally at St. Mary's, the
chief town of the colony, in order that he might take
care of the English, of whom the greater number are
settled there, and also of such Indians as do not live far
distant or are engaged in passing backwards and for-
wards. Father White betook himself to his former
station at Pascataway, but Father Roger went to a new
settlement called in the vulgar idiom Patuxen, for a

68 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

better opportunity of learning the Indian language, also
that he might better instruct some neophytes, and scat-
ter the seed of faith along the bank of that great river.
This was almost the only fruit of his labors (there).

The severest trials of the missionaries came from the
ingratitude and injustice of men styling themselves
Catholics. The oppression and hatred of enemies were
to be expected. The children of darkness naturally
hate the brightness of day, the pure glories of light.
But that the sons of the Church should seek to oppress
and persecute Her, though, alas ! a sin so common in
our own days, is a thing not only base and unnatural in
itself, but even a crime, the very thought of which
causes deep pain in every noble heart, and causes every
generous breast to swell with indignation and horror.
And so the conduct of some of the Catholics of the colony,
who sought to infringe upon the rights of the Church,
caused the missionaries the most bitter pangs. A mis-
sionary writes as follows from Maryland, in 1642 : " One
thing, however, remains to be mentioned with a passing
notice, viz : that an occasion of suffering has not been
wanting to us from those from whom we rather expected
protection ; who, in anxiety for their own interests, have
not hesitated to violate the immunities of the Church by
endeavoring to enforce here the unjust laws passed in
England, that it shall not be lawful for any person or
community, even ecclesiastical, in any manner, even by
gift, to acquire or possess any land, unless the per-
mission of the civil magistrate be first obtained. And
when our Fathers declared this to be repugnant to the
laws of the Church, two priests were sent from England
to teach the contrary doctrine. But it ended quite the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES 69

reverse of what was expected, for our reasons being
adduced and heard, and the matter itself more clearly-
examined and understood, sentence was given in our
favor, and received the full concurrence of the laity
generally."

Father John Cooper is mentioned as being in Mary-
land in 1644, and Father Bernard Hartwell is noticed as
dying there in 1646. We are of the opinion that these
missionaries were in Maryland in 1642. In a letter for
that year we read : " To our great comfort, two new
Fathers have recently come to us from England, they
have had a bad voyage of fourteen weeks, though it
usually does not take more than six or eight. But of
these, of their labors and fruits, we shall, please God,
speak another time. We hope indeed that it will be
abundant, and thus far we may predict much from their
present zeal and unity of soul with us."

If these Fathers here alluded to were not Cooper and
Hartwell we are at a loss to know who they could have
been, as no other new names occur in the Roman Cat-
alogue about that period.

Father Cooper was a native of Hants, and was born in
16 10. In his twentieth year he entered the Society of
Jesus. In 1645, he was one of those Fathers who were
violently carried off to Virginia " to the great damage of
religion." He underwent many trials in that place and
died there in 1646.

Father Bernard Hartwell was born in 1607, in Bucks,
England, and became a Jesuit in 1626. He was em-
ployed for some time at St. Omer's College. We find
that he served in that college as Prefect and Minister.
As already stated he died in Maryland, in 1646.

JO OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Father Laurence Starkie probably succeeded Father
Copley as Superior. This Father was sometimes called
Sankey and Sanchez. There is no doubt that he lived
for some time at St. Inigoes with Father Copley. From
the fact that his name is often coupled in wills and
other documents with Father Francis Fitzherbert's name
I conclude that he likewise lived with that Father for
some time at Newtown. He was born in the year 1606,
and entered the Society about 1636. He was sent to
the Lancashire District, in 1638. He arrived in Mary-
land, in 1649. This was the year in which the great
Toleration Act was passed in the Maryland Assembly.
The majority of those who made religious freedom the
law of the land were Catholics. Some of the Assembly-
men who voted for liberty of worship belonged to the
Newtown Congregation. We may name among them
the unfortunate Walter Peake, William Bretton, Cuth-
bert Fenvvick, Thomas Thornborough, John Mansell of
St. Clement's hundred, and the Honorable Robert
Clarke. The Catholic settlers of Maryland had been
treated as helots in their native land by the " sincere
followers of the pure doctrine of the heaven-sent Re-
formation ;" they had since their arrival on the shores
of the Chesapeake felt the hatred of the Virginia Pro-
testants ; Claiborne and Ingle, both enemies, deadly
enemies, to the Faith of Rome, planned and plotted for
their utter destruction, and hovered around them like
vultures ready to pounce upon them in a moment of
weakness ; and so they wished to be avenged. And
they avenged themselves sweetly, gloriously, triumph-
antly. They passed the Toleration Act, and the history
of mankind will forever proclaim to the world in the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. J I

praise it gives them that they are avenged, fully., honor-
ably avenged. Little, perhaps, they dreamed in the
moment of their generosity in according to others what
had been so long, and so cruelly denied themselves, that
their kindness and magnanimity would be ill requited.
Yet such unfortunately was the case. Puritans who had
been expelled for non-conformity from Virginia and
other places, the " Saints " who loved the sword and
gloried in the shedding of human blood, but hated the
Cross and abominated the purity of holy water, stalked
in upon them from the wasted fields of England, and
from red scenes of carnage in Ireland, and began to op-
press and persecute them. Troopers who had learned
canting hymns and fearful oaths in the camp of Carlyle's
charming hero, Oliver Cromwell, began to despise their
rights, and to trample their benefactors as worms beneath
their feet. The missionaries became objects of special
hate, and victims not to be spared. The light that shone
upon Father Starkie on the day of his arrival was turned
to gloom and darkness. As, in England, he found him-
self proscribed and banned. To evade his enemies he
was obliged to adopt every species of disguise. When
he wished to visit the gentleman in his manor, or the
Indian in his hut, he was obliged to dress as a farmer,
or a soldier, and wear a beard that covered his breast.
He had to adopt more than one alias. At last being
betrayed, he was obliged to fly into Virginia where he
died in 1657. What this Father and others suffered in
Virginia we do not fully know. But from the enmity of
Virginia at that period of its history towards Catholics
we may easily guess. Forced to live unknown, to hide

72 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

their priestly character, to pass as men of the world, they
often suffered, no doubt, from hunger and want. In time
of sickness they had no kind hand to assist them, no
friendly voice to cheer them. They sank amid an accu-
mulation of wrongs, injuries, and miseries, and were cast
into the earth by strangers in a foreign land, without a
prayer for their souls, without a tear for their sorrows,
without a cross to mark their graves.

In a school-book is written " Thomas Sankey, July
3rd, 1608." This can hardly have been Father Starkey's
book, as we cannot believe that he wrote his name in it
when only two years old. Though nearly everything
regarding the life of this Father is now lost, in his own
time, however, he seems to have been widely known. In
wills, he is sometimes termed the " well-known priest,
Father Starkie."

About Copley's time there was in St. Mary's County
a gentleman who signalized himself by his many virtues
and untiring zeal. His name was so often connected
with works of mercy that some Protestant historians
have mistaken him for one of the Fathers. We refer to
Mr. Ralph Crouch, who, it will be seen from the follow-
ing account of him, taken from the English Records,
was merely a layman while in Maryland : " Brother
Ralph Crouch, a native of Oxford, who entered the So-
ciety as a temporal coadjutor, was born in 1620, and
joined the novitiate at Watten, about 1639. Soon after
he left the noviceship, and went to Maryland, where for
nearly twenty years he was the ' right hand and solace '
of the English Fathers in that laborious and extensive
mission. Being a man of some education, he opened

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 73

schools* for teaching humanities, gave catechetical in-
structions to the poorer class, and was assiduous in vis-
iting the sick. He was a man full of zeal and charity,
and ready for every good and pious work. Being at
length re-admitted to the Society in 1659, he returned
to Europe, completed his noviceship at Watten, and was
admitted to his vows in 1669. He spent the remainder
of his life at Liege, remarkable for piety and patience in
sufferings, especially in his last protracted sickness. He
died a model of edification to all, November the 18th,
1679, at the age of fifty-nine."

Mr. Crouch while in Maryland was greatly assisted by
some other religious laymen. Among these was a sur-
geon, Henry Hooper. This gentleman, who died about
1650, left a legacy to Ralph Crouch for such "pious uses
as he thinks fit." Surgeon Hooper is mentioned in the
Annapolis Records as one of those who came with Fa-
ther Copley.

The next Father who labored in Newtown was Fran-
cis Fitzherbert, alias Darby. " He was a native of Derby-
shire ; born 161 3; entered the Society 1634; and was
made a Spiritual Coadjutor, September 15th, 1655. He
was camp Missioner at Ghent in 1645 ; then Missioner
in Portugal ; afterwards Professor of Moral Theology at
Liege, and in 1654 was sent out to the Maryland Mis-
sion. Returning from Maryland in 1652, he was sent to
the Devonshire District. In 1672, he was in the Oxford-
shire District, having been unoccupied for several years,
owing to some difficulty in placing him in England." He
died at St. Omer's, May 22d, 1687.

* These schools have probably the honor of being the first of
their kind established in Maryland.

74 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

The following graphic description of Father Fitzher-
bert's journey to Maryland may prove interesting :

" 1654. This year Father Francis Fitzherbert, destined
for Maryland, at the first intimation of our Superior,
entered without a single companion, but with great mag-
nanimity and alacrity, upon an arduous expedition, and a
long and laborious journey among strangers differing
wholly in morals and religion. Nor, during his entire
expedition, did he lack an abundant harvest of merit,
through his confidence in God and his extraordinary
patience. Four ships sailed together from England, but
were overtaken by a fearful storm as they were passing
the Western Isles, and the ship which carried the Father
was so shattered that, springing a leak in battling with
the continued violence of the sea, the pump, became
almost useless. Four men at a time, not only from the
ship's crew, but from among the passengers also, were
kept constantly working at the great pump, each one in
turn day and night.

" Having changed the course, their intention was to
make sail towards Barbadoes, but no art or labor could
accomplish this, and so they decided on abandoning the
ship and committing themselves with their wares to the
long boat. As, however, the swelling sea and huge waves
prevented this also, many a form of death presented itself
to their minds and the habit of terror, now grown a
familiar thought, had almost excluded the particular fear
of death. The tempest lasted in all two months, whence
the opinion arose that it did not come from the storm of
sea or sky, but was occasioned by the malevolence of
demons. Forthwith they seized a little old woman sus-
pected of sorcery, and after examining her with the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 75

strictest severity, they killed her, whether guilty or not
guilty, as the suspected cause of all the evil. The corpse
and whatever belonged to her they cast into the sea.
However, the winds did not in consequence abate their
violence, nor did the raging sea smooth its threatening
billows. To the troubles of the storm sickness was added
next, which attacked almost every person and carried off
not a few. The Father himself escaped untouched by
the disease, but in working at the pump somewhat too
laboriously, he contracted a slight fever of a few days'
continuance. Having passed through multiplied dan-
gers, at length, by the favor of God, the ship reached the
port of Maryland."

A regular chapel was probably built in the time of
Father Fitzherbert, at Newtown. In the trial of this
Father at St. Leonard's Creek, the 5th of October, 1658,
one of the charges brought against him was that he tried
to force Dr. Thomas Gerrard, the proprietor of St. Cle-
ment's Manor, Bedlam Neck, to go to church on Sun-
days. Father Fitzherbert seems to have been a very
zealous missionary. This is proved by the very charges *
brought against him by the enemies of religion in his
time. He was a man of courage and resolve, and we owe
him a debt of deep gratitude, on account of the noble
course he pursued during his famous trial. Being
accused, among other things, of preaching and teaching
at Newtown and Chaptico, he neither denied nor acknow-

* We learn from the indictment of Father Fitzherbert that he
was fond of preaching to his people, and that he was not unwilling
to address even Protestant audiences. He was very zealous in
spreading Catholic books and Catechisms all around him. Henry
Coursey accuses him of saying that "he must be directed by his
conscience more than by the law of any country."

y6 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

ledged the charge, but defended himself under the plea
that " by the very first law of this country, Holy Church,
within this province, shall have and enjoy all her rights,
liberties, and franchises, wholly and without blemish,
amongst which that of preaching and teaching is not the
least. Neither imports it what church is there meant ;
as by the true intent of the Act concerning religion,
every church professing to believe in God the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, is accounted Holy Church here.
Because by the act entitled 'An Act Concerning Religion,'
it is provided that no person whatsoever, professing to
believe in Jesus Christ shall be molested for or in respect
of his or her religion, or the free exercise thereof. And
undoubtedly preaching and teaching is the free exercise
of every churchman's religion. And upon this I crave
judgment."

The decision of the court was favorable to Father
Fitzherbert. It is given in the following terms : " The
opinion of the Board is, that it is neither rebellion nor
mutiny to utter such words alledged in the 4th article, if
it were proved."

In 1658 Father Thomas Payton came to labor on the
Maryland Mission. This Father was a native of Lin-
colnshire, England, and was born in the year 1607. He
entered the Society in 1630. His first priestly labors,
we believe, were as camp missioner in Belgium. In 1649
he was employed in the London District, and six years
later on we find him employed as missioner in the Hants
District. Having spent one year and a half of zealous
toils in Maryland, he was obliged on account of special
business to return to England. Returning again to his
Maryland Mission he died on the voyage, January the
1 2 th, 1660.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES: JJ

CHAPTER IV.

In 1 66 1, that is about twelve years before Father Mar-
quette floated down the Mississippi in his birch-bark
canoe, and about twenty-one years before La Salle made
his way to the Gulf of Mexico, Father Henry Warren,*
alias Pelham, completed with distinction his fourth year
of theology in one of the English Colleges on the Euro-
pean Continent. Immediately afterwards he was sent on
the " happy Mission of Maryland." On his arrival, accord-
ing to some old documents, he obtained a conveyance of
all Church property from Mr. Fenwick to himself, " Mr-
Copley's successor." On October the 6th, 1662, he pro-
cured the Patent of St. Thomas' Manor from Dr. Thomas
Matthews.

Henry Warren was a native of " brave old Kent," in
England. He was born in 1635, and was of good family.
He was probably the brother of Father William, who, at
the age of nineteen, was converted to the Catholic Faith
by a priest in England. William was not a Jesuit, as
Oliver erroneously states, but a pious and devoted sec-
ular priest. It was to him that Father Barton referred
when he said : " Father Warren was a man who never
sinned in Adam."

* Father Warren was the son of William Warren and his wife
Anne Downes. He entered the Society in 1052, being then about
seventeen years of age.

yS OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Henry, having arrived at his seventeenth year, en-
tered the Society. In February, 1670, he was professed
of the four vows. He was in Maryland at the time of
his profession, as we find him named Superior of the
Mission in 1665. After laboring for some years in Mary-
land he was recalled to England. During the remainder
of his life he was obliged to live in the midst of dangers
and hardships. He lived in the midst of persecution.
The old block that is now on exhibition in London
Tower was then red and wet with the blood of his breth-
ren. He was the minister of a proscribed creed, and
went on his duties with a price set upon his head. He
was in England during the bloody Revolution of 1688.
Just before this unhappy event great efforts were made
to gain a firm footing at Oxford for the Fathers. If this
could be done great hopes might be entertained of stem-
ming the flood of heresy and corruption that deluged
the fair garden of the Church in England. Father War-
ren was one of the Fathers chosen for this difficult, dan-
gerous, and important task. Among the distinguished
Catholics at that time in Oxford were William Joyner,
the uncle of Father Thomas Phillips, an author of repute,
and John Dryden, who but a short period before had
written of the Church as

" A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged."

The arrival of William of Orange in England quickly
dashed the hopes of the Catholics to the ground. The
Revolutionary storm burst forth, and Persecution once
more drew its merciless and blood-stained sword.
Throughout all England, but especially in Oxford, the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 79

Catholics were hunted down and trampled upon. The
following letter from Father Warren, written some time
after, will help to give us an idea of the state of things
around him. The letter was sent to the Provincial, Fa-
ther John Clare (Sir John Warner, Bart.), and is couched
in disguised terms for prudence' sake :

Oxford, 2d May, 1690.
Hon. Sir : — You are desirous to know how things are
with us in these troublesome times, since trade (religion)
is so much decayed. I can only say that in the general
decline of trade we have had our share. For, before this
turn, we were in a very hopeful way, for we had three
public shops (chapels) open in Oxford. One did wholly
belong to us, and good custom we had, viz : the Univer-
sity (University College Chapel) ; but now it's shut up ;
the master was taken, and ever since in prison, and the
rest forced to abscond. In Mag. (Magdalen College) we
had one good man in a good station, and in time might
have had more concern ; but now, all is blown over, and
our master, Thomas Beckett, one evening was thrown
down in the kennel, trampled upon, and had been killed,
had not one, upon the noise, come up with a candle.
In Christ Church, though we had no man, yet the mas-
ter was reconciled by us, and in a short time would have
taken one (of the Society), but now he is fled, and the
shop shut up. In other places all were forced to fly,
and ever since to hide for fear of the law. Mr. Luson
(Father Edward Levison) was so closely pursued, that
he was forced to quit his horse, and by ways full of water
and dirt to walk in his boots, twenty-two hours together,
sometimes up to the middle, so that before he could reach

80 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

any place to rest in security, the blood was settled in his
feet. No rents are paid, and worse things we expect, if
some better settlement be not soon found out ; of which
we are still in some hope. Thus, in short, I have sent
you what I know, and am, honoured sir,

Your very humble servant,

Henry Pelham.

To be a priest in those times, to be a priest who was
faithful to his God, required no ordinary courage. He,
who, like Father Warren, was true to his vocation during
the Penal Days, " that dark time of cruel wrong," was
undoubtedly a hero, an apostle, a noble soldier of the
Cross. In 170 1 we find Father Warren still laboring in
the Oxfordshire District. The Catholics at that period
who claimed his ministrations were not numerous, but
they were far apart, and he was obliged to serve them in
secret, and at the peril of his life.

The Superior of St. Mary's Residence, the headquart-
ers of Father Warren, and from which he sallied forth
under the cover of night, and in disguise, to attend his
persecuted flock, was Father Francis Hildesley, a man
" who admirably administered the duties of his office."
His co-laborers were Fathers John Alcock, alias Gage,
Charles Collingwood, Edward Levison, John Mostyn,
and Thomas Poulton.

Father Warren was not only a good religious and a
fervent missionary, but was also a man of great business
capacity. Like Father Copley, he attended to the tem-
poral affairs of the Mission, and like him he was prudent
and far-seeing. After a long life of constant toils and
sufferings, he crowned his days with a peaceful and

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 8 1

happy death in the scene of his last labors on June the
7th, 1702, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

The name of Father Peter Manners appears in the
Catalogue for 1664.

I will here take the liberty of citing some extracts
from the Maryland Annual Letters :

1669. Two Fathers have charge of the Maryland
Mission ; a third, Father Peter Manners, was suddenly
taken from amongst us in the beginning of his fruitful
labors, no less to the regret than to the loss of the in-
habitants. To repair our deficiency, two priests and a
temporal coadjutor were sent over this autumn, so that
the Mission now comprises four priests and three tem-
poral coadjutors.

Father Peter Manners, vere Pelcon, who was one of
the most zealous of the missionary Fathers, was unhap-
pily drowned in crossing a river. The Provincial, Fa-
ther Joseph Simeon, has left us the following description
of him :

Father Peter Manners was a native of Norfolk, thirty-
eight years of age. He spent twelve years in the So-
ciety, most of them in the Maryland Mission, with great
zeal and fruit. He ended his days on Wednesday in the
Easter week of this year (April 24th, 1669), by a sudden
but not an unprovided death. Obedience directed him
to it, and charity consummated his course, even amidst
the waters, which could not extinguish his charity, though
they did extinguish his life. For having been summoned
to a distant call of duty, whilst crossing a rapid mill-
stream, which had become unusually swollen by the
rains, he, together with his horse, was carried away by

82 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

the torrent and drowned. He was deeply regretted by
his people.

John Pennington was born in 1647 m tne city of Lon-
don. Of the Jesuits that he saw in his youthful days he
could tell many a strange story. The terrible fate that
had befallen many of them whom young Pennington had
met did not deter him from following their example. It
rather incited him the more to enter their ranks in the
hope of one day attaining the martyr's crown. Perse-
cution only adds to the courage and generosity of every
true child of the Church. So in his nineteenth year,
John Pennington put on bravely and cheerfully the pro-
scribed mantle of the Jesuit, in the Novitiate of Watten.

Watten* is about two leagues distant from St. Omer.
In 1625 the English Jesuit Novitiate was removed from
Liege to that place. In 1702, Clementia, Countess of
Flanders, founded a church at Watten in honor of the
Blessed Virgin, St. Nicholas, and St. Richerius ; and to
this was subsequently attached a College of Regular
Canons. On its dissolution, St. Pius V. annexed it to
the newly-founded See of St. Omer. With the consent
of the Dean and Chapter, and of the Court of Brussels,
the Church and Manor, with a revenue of three thousand
florins, were conveyed in perpetuity by the Bishop, James

* A report for 1705 observes : Although this house (Watten No-
vitiate), buried in the remote solitude of the mountain, would seem
to be rather devoted to the study of the interior life alone, never-
theless the novices once a week gave catechism and Christian
doctrine in the villages to the distance of two or three German
miles. On the greater feasts one thousand, and often one thou-
sand two hundred from these villages flocked to the church to re-
ceive the holy sacraments, which might well be styled the sanctu-
ary of those rural districts.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 83

Blase, O. S. F., for the Novitiate of the English Jesuits.
This grant was ratified by the Father-General Aquaviva
in 1612.

At Watten our youth learned to deny himself, to fly
from worldly grandeur, and to pant after the glory of
God. He was carefully exercised in humble offices that
he might learn more thoroughly to understand the virtue
of humility of spirit. His hours were chiefly spent in
pious reading, and in close communion with his Maker
by means of mental prayer.

After leaving Watten Father Pennington was sent to
Liege to study his theology at the celebrated Jesuit Col-
lege in that city. In 1678 he was employed in mission-
ary duty in the College* of the Immaculate Conception
(Derby District). From England he was sent out to
help the missionaries in Maryland, who stood very much
in need of fellow-laborers. During the time he was in
Maryland some of the Fathers, to their other duties,
added that of teaching. In 1677 a school for humanities
was opened by the Society, in the centre of the country.
It was directed by two of the Fathers. The Annual
Letters say : The native youth, applying themselves
assiduously to study, make good progress. Maryland
and the recently established school sent two boys to St
Omer, who yielded in abilities to few Europeans when

* About thirty-eight years before Father Pennington's time, Fa-
ther Henry Wilkinson, in this same residence, was arrested, then
committed to prison, and arraigned at the bar, but no sufficient
evidence of the priesthood appearing against him, the heretical
oath of allegiance was tendered to him, and upon his refusing to
take it, he was condemned to the penalty of premunire. After
three years imprisonment he was liberated by some soldiers.

84 O'LD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

competing for the honour of being first in their class.
So that not gold, nor silver, nor the other products of the ■
earth alone, but men also, are gathered from thence to
bring those regions, which foreigners have unjustly called
ferocious, to a higher state of virtue and cultivation.
Two of the Society were sent out to Maryland this year
to assist the laborers in that most ample vineyard of our
Lord.

Father John Pennington did not last long amid the
fatigues and hardships of the Maryland Mission. He
departed this life on the 18th of October, 1685, in the
thirty-eighth year of his age. I find him named in some
documents as " Mr. John Pennington of St. Clement's
Bay." This is sufficient proof that he resided for some
time at Newtown.

The name of Father John Matthews appears in the
Catalogue for 1691. This Father was born in London,
1658, and entered the Society on the 9th of October,
1677. After having served the Maryland Mission with
fidelity and zeal, he died at Newtown on the 8th of De-
cember, 1694, at the age of thirty-six years.

Father William Hunter came to Maryland in 1692,
and became Superior of the Mission four years later on.
Father Hunter was a native of Yorkshire, and was born
in 1659. He entered the Society in his twentieth year.
After his ordination he spent one year in missionary
labors in England. He died in Maryland, August the
15th, 1723.

Father John Hall, another of the missionaries, came
to Maryland in 1692. In 1696 we find him named as
Procurator. Before 1698 he returned to Europe and
appears as Minister and Professor of Casuistry at Ghent

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 85

for the years 1700 and 1 701. Father Hall died at Ghent
on the 9th of July, 1703, aged thirty-nine years.

Father James Gonent, a native of Artois, born in 1653,
was not destined by Providence to work in the Maryland
Mission. This good Father died on the voyage to Am-
erica in 1698.

The name of Rev. James Haddock appears in the
Catalogue for 1699. His name is also found in some of
the old books of the Newtown Library. He belonged
to the Order of Minorites of Strict Observance.

Father Matthew Brooke was born in Maryland in 1672.
Being already a priest, he entered the Society in 1699.
In the Catalogue for 1701 he is mentioned as being at
Liege preparing for his examination. He served for a
short time in Charles County, and died at St. Thomas
Manor in 1702.

Father William Wood came to Maryland in 1700.
He was born in Surrey in February, 167 1. He entered
the Society in 1689, and was professed of the four vows.
He took the name of Guillick as his alias. Father Wood
spent twenty years in the Maryland Mission, in which he
died in August, 1720.

Father Richard Kirkham, alias Latham, came to Ma-
ryland in 1703. This missionary was born in Lancashire
on the 31st of July, 167 1. He entered the Society in
169 1, as Richard Latham, vere Kirkham. He is named
in the Diary of Mr. Blundell, of Crosby. " Dr. Richard
Latham came hither to show the petition which was
presented to the Queen by Bernard Howard on behalf
of the said Dr. Latham, Mr. Hagerston, etc., March 29th,
1703, and Latham went hence to Liverpool in hopes to
take shipping to Virginia, January 29th, 1703. I went

86 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

with Mr. Richard Latham to Liverpool and helped him
to buy goods." Father Richard died on his return voy-
age to England from Maryland in 1708.

The name of Father Thomas Percy, a native of Shrop-
shire, appears in the Roman Catalogue for 1682. This
Father soon after returned to England, and died in Ghent
January 25th, 1685.

Father Henry Cattaway, who also came to Maryland
in 1703, was born in Suffolk in September, 1675. He
entered the Society in 1693. After spending about three
years in the Maryland Mission he returned to England
and served the mission in the College of St. Chad, Staf-
ford District, until 17 10, when he was sent to the College
of the Immaculate Conception, Derby District, and died
probably in the same College, March 13th, 17 18, aged
forty-three years.

Father Thomas Havers appears in the Catalogue for
1705. This Father was a native of Thelton, County'
Cambridge, born February 28th, 1668. He entered the
Society at Watten, September 7th, 1688. In 1701 he
was Prefect at St. Omer's College. This Father was of
a delicate constitution, and as the Catalogue for 1730
observes, extremely infirm. He died at Watten, May the
16th, 1737.

Father Thomas Hodgson was a native of Yorkshire,
born on the 2d of November, 1682. He entered the
Society in September, 1703. In 171 1 he was sent to the
Maryland Mission. He died at Bohemia Manor, Cecil
County, Maryland, on the 14th of December, 1726.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES.' 8?

CHAPTER V.

In Br. Henry Foley's Collectanea we have the follow-
ing account of another early missionary : Father Edward
Tidder, alias Edward Ingleby, was a native of Suffolk,
born 1630; entered the Society September 7th, 1652,
and was professed of the four vows (under the name of
Edward Ingleby, according to a list of professions in the
archives, but as Edward Tidder, in the Catalogue of the
Province), on February 2d, 1672. Being ordained priest
April 1 6th, 1661, he was sent soon afterwards to the
Maryland Mission, where he is traced from 1663 till 1667.
In 1669 he was missioner, and Procurator or Superior in
the College of the Holy Apostles (Suffolk District). In
1679 he succeeded the martyred Procurator of the Prov-
ince, Father William Ireland, and retained that office for
some years, and is named Edward Ingleby in a letter
from Father Warner (alias Clare), the Provincial, to the
Father-General, dated St. Omer's College, June 15th,
1690. (Anglia, Stonyhurst MSS., vol. v., n. 1 10.) The
temporal affairs of the Province had been nearly brought
to ruin by the persecution in the Oates Plot, and espe-
cially by means of a traitor agent, and Fathers Edward
Petre and Tidder made great efforts to gather up the
scattered fragments. Great difficulty is expressed in the
above letter of finding means to support the members of
the Province, who were either lying in prisons, or had no

88 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

patrons to whom to resort, for many of the noblemen
and gentry who formerly retained a chaplain, were then
afraid or unable to do so, both on account of their reduced
means and of the dangerous times. August, 1678-91, he
retired for a short time in concealment, and ventured
back again in November following, as the Provincial
expresses in a letter to the Father-General, November
7th, 1679. (Father John Warner's Note and Letter-
Book.) In September, 1679, he was appointed Vice-
Rector of St. Ignatius' College, London (Id.). He is
mentioned in several other letters of the Provincial in
the same Note and Letter-Book. He went to reside at
the New College in the Savoy, Strand, May 24th, 1687.
(See Records S. J., vol. v., p. 265.) He was Vice-Pro-
vincial in England in 1690, and his death is recorded in
the Necrology of the Province, in the name of Edward
Ingleby, in London, January 2d, 1699.

Father George Pole appears in Maryland in 1668.
This Father was a native of Derbyshire, and was born in
1628. He entered the Society in 1656. In 1658 he was
missioner in the Yorkshire District, and during 1665 in
the adjoining Residence of St John (the Durham Dis-
trict). He died in the Maryland Mission on the 31st of
October, 1669.

We will give here the copy of a letter from Father
Joseph Simeons, Provincial, to the Very Rev. Father-
General, recounting the death of Father Pole :

Very Rev. Father in Christ, Pax Christi :

On the 31st of October, 1669, died in Maryland, Fr.
Geo. Pole. He volunteered himself two years before for
that arduous Mission in America, having in the prcced-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 89

ing year, when the plague raged in London, heroically
devoted himself to the service of the afflicted. If any-
thing else in his praise can be collected, it shall later on
be put into the form of a eulogy. In the meantime, I
humbly beg your Paternity to be pleased to order the
usual suffrages for the repose of his soul. Since the
Superior of Maryland writes word that Ours, on account
of their fewness in numbers, are worn out with over-
work, the sick even, as was the case with Father George
Pole, being obliged to assist the dying, I humbly ask
your Paternity to allow the Provincial to send there some
who have finished their studies.

Your V. Rev. Paternity's humble Serv't in Christ,

Joseph Simeons.
London, 28th Feb., 1669.

According to the Annual Letters for 1671, Father
William Pelham died in the Maryland Mission in that
year. This missionary was born about the year 1624, in
Suffolk, England. He entered the Society in 1643.

Twelve years afterwards we find him zealously labor-
ing at the College of the Holy Apostles.

The Fitzwilliams of Lincoln, England, gave some dis-
tinguished members to the Society of Jesus. William,
George, and John, alias Villiers, were probably brothers
by blood, as well as by the holy ties of the religious
profession. Father George made his studies at the
English College, at Rome. The other two brothers
pursued their studies both at St. Omer's and at the Eter-
nal City. William leaves us the following statement :
" My true name is William Fitzwilliam. I am son of
William Fitzwilliam and Frances Hilliard, both Catholics

9<D OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

and of distinction. I was born in Lincolnshire. I have
no relatives surviving on my father's side, and have an
only sister married to Lord Percy. On my mother's
side are two uncles and two aunts living in the County
of Suffolk. But for the oppression of Catholics by the
heretics, my parents would be living in very good cir-
cumstances."

Father John Villiers made his Novitiate at Watten.
Soon after his ordination he was sent to the Maryland
Mission where his death occurred on the 30th of Octo-
ber, in the year 1665.

Father Francis Pennington was born in Worcestershire
in 1644, and entered the Society in his twentieth year.
He, in company with Father Nicholas Gulick and two
lay-brothers sailed with the royal fleet from London in
1675. They arrived safely in Maryland towards the end
of autumn. Father Pennington soon became noted for
his zeal and prudence, and was chosen, in 1684, to suc-
ceed Father Michael Forster as Superior of the Mission.
His days were cast in evil times. He was Superior of
Maryland during the Protestant Revolution of 1689. He
witnessed all the horrors of that black time. His heart
must have often bled to see the fatal triumphs of the
enemies of religion, to see churches desecrated, to see
his people persecuted and his priests " hunted down like
wolves." To add to the sorrows of Father Pennington
he saw some of his dear fellow-priests dying at their posts
around him.

Though the Collectanea says that Father Francis Pen-
nington died on his passage back to Europe, I learn from
an old document before me that he expired on the 22d
of February, 1699, in the house of Mr. Hill, in Newtown.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 9 1

It is probable that he was taken suddenly ill while visit-
ing some members of his congregation.

Father Nicholas Guillick was a native of Rouen, and
was born in 1647. In his twenty-second year he entered
the Novitiate at Watten. In 1675 we find him as mis-
sioner at Watten, but even then destined by his Superior
for the Maryland Mission.

Among the missionaries in Maryland in 1677, was
Father Thomas Gavan, who is thought, with much rea-
son, to have been the brother of Father John Gavan, who
suffered at Tyburn on June the 30th, 1679. Father John
" was a man of remarkable talent, and a noted preacher,
and was called the silver trumpet, from his sweet and
clear intonation of voice." The missionary, Father
Thomas Gavan, was probably of the Norrington-Wilts
family. He was born in London in 1646, and became a
Jesuit novice in 1668. After having labored for some
years in Maryland, he returned to England in 1685, and
served the Mission of Thelton, in the College of the
Holy Apostles, for some time. He was then sent to the
Hampshire District, and subsequently to the College of
St. Francis Xavier (the Hereford and South Wales Dis-
trict). He died piously in Lincolnshire, on June the 4th,
1712.

Father Michael Forster, alias Gulick, comes before us
in the annals as Superior of Maryland in 1678. This
missionary belonged to a truly Catholic family of dis-
tinction who suffered much on account of their fidelity to
the ancient Faith. His father, Mr. Henry Forster, who,
after the death of his wife entered the Society as a Coad-
jutor Brother, " was a man of birth, and highly connected
in the County of Suffolk. He was one of the six chil-

92 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

dren of Christopher Forster, Esq., of the Parish of Cop-
doke, in Suffolk, by his mother, Elizabeth Rookwood, of
the ancient family of that name. He married the eldest
of three co-heiresses, daughters of a Mr. Mason, of the
County of Huntingdon, and had twelve children. The
nine who survived infancy, namely, six daughters and
three sons, all entered religion."

Christopher Forster and Elizabeth Rookwood, the
grandparents of this missionary, " were both persons of
unspotted fame and reputation, and great sufferers for
their religion, both as to imprisonment and loss of
means." Their son, Henry, the father of our mission-
ary, was a model of every virtue both in the world and
in religion. He " was one of those several Catholic
families who compounded with the King not to be mo-
lested from abroad upon the account of religion, and
thus he and his wife enjoyed themselves in all peace and
prosperity from about the twenty-fourth to the forty-
second year of his age, in as well a regulated family as
any doubtless in England, keeping always an open
chapel as long as the times did allow it, and Mass con-
stantly about eight in the morning; and at four after din-
ner on Sundays and Holidays Vespers of the Divine
Office, read by the priest, and always at nine at night the
long litanies, and in Holy Week the whole office of the
Church with all its ceremonies." But great trials and
troubles came at last. The mother of our missionary
passed away suddenly on Good Friday, about the hour
ofTcnebrae. She left behind her nine children — "three
sons and six daughters — whereof Michael^ the least and
last, had scarce a year old complete. But this," writes
one of Mr. Forster's sons, " was as it were only a little

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 93

prologue to the grand scene which soon followed, the
cruel wars not long after breaking out, and a great per-
secution against Catholics, whereof my father had his
share. What stories were not raised against him ? of
armies under ground which he had trained up in his
court by night ; of I know not how many cooks, who
after having dressed and served in a vast number of oxen,
and not so much as a bone coming out again for them to
pick, all quitted his house and service; and the maid # of
the parson of the next parish was said to have taken her
oath that she saw a cart load of bright armor enter in
our great gate, which vain and false report gained so
much upon sober men, that three nights together our
house was beset by men sent by the Chief of Ipswich for
to discover the hidden arms, etc., but the rabble of Ip-
swich was so incensed thereby, that they could scarce be
kept from gathering into a head to come and pull down
the house over our heads, lest we should cut their throats
with the hidden army, and what they long threatened,
six or seven thousand not long after of the rabble, out of
the associated counties did in a manner effect, our house
being the fourth they rifled and defaced, in so much so,
that one Squire Blosse, a Protestant neighbor, coming to
see it afterwards could not forbear weeping. Indeed, my
father had this advantage over his fellow-Catholic neigh-
bors who complained more of the insolence of their own
parishioners than of those who came afar off, whereas the
whole parish urged and offered to take arms to withstand
the rabble, and defend our house, which my father re-
fused, to hinder the mischief which might thence acrue
to the parish itself, choosing rather to see his house and
self perish than to permit any harm to happen to any one

94 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

of them, resolved according to the example of others of
his Catholic neighbors to abandon all to God's holy
Providence ; but the parish would not rest here, but
came in the night with carts to transport the chief mov-
ables to their own houses, to which my father consented
in part, fearing lest finding the house wholly unfurnished
it might occasion their own plunder."

It would be going beyond the purpose of this book to
recount all the trials and sufferings of Mr. Henry Forster.
It will be sufficient to say that the rabble endeavored to
catch that worthy gentleman in order to be able to burn
him to death in one of his own rooms ; that his estate
was sequestrated, and that being thus reduced in circum-
stances he was obliged " to break up house-keeping, and
let out half the manner (manor) house, with tillage to a
tenant, and make money upon his own stock to live upon
in the other part of the house, as it were privately, reduc-
ing his family of some twenty, to himself, nine children,
and one maid, and priest when at home." After an end-
less series of persecutions, Mr. Forster determined to
leave England and go into exile. He retired to Belgium.
After spending some time at Antwerp he removed to
Brussels, where he lived for nearly three years. During
this period " he dieted himself and Michael with Mr.
Bedingfield, but put his daughters to pension among the
Devotes, and not into monasteries, not to seem to thrust
them into religion, but to leave it wholly to God and
their own choice."

Michael, at a very early period, was sent to St. Omer's
to make his studies. On the 30th of October, 1659, be-
ing then about eighteen years of age, he was admitted an
Alumnus of the English College in Rome. On the 5th

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 95

of April, 1660, he left the College and entered the Society
at Watten. According to the Collectanea he came to
Maryland in 1669. He died in Maryland on February
the 6th, I684. Father John Warner, Provincial, in a let-
ter to the Very Rev. Father-General, dated August the
20th, 1680, mentions a report that a school had been
established in Maryland, of which Father Michael was
Superior, in which they taught humanities with great
success.

One of the teachers in this early school was Thomas
Hothersall, an Approved Scholastic, who went by the
alias Slater. Mr. Hothersall was the son of William
Hothersall and his wife Ann Slater, both of the middle
class of Society. " The Slaters," says a note in the Col-
lectanea, " were a good Catholic yeoman family, Thomas
Slater appearing in a list of non-jurors in 17 15, as hold-
ing an estate at Grimsargh, adjoining the township of
Hothersall. They were, later, connected by marriage
with the Heatleys of Brindle Lodge." Thomas was pro-
bably the uncle of Father William Hothersall, who was
the last Jesuit Rector of the English College, Rome, from
1766, until the Suppression in 1773. Mr. Thomas Hoth-
ersall was born at Grimsargh, and had one brother and
two sisters. He was always a Catholic, and made his
studies at St. Omer's College. He became a Jesuit on
the 20th of June, 1668. From the Catalogue we learn,
that though he studied theology, he was never ordained
priest. Two of this old Catholic and loyal Lancashire
family, the Hothersall family, probably uncles of Thomas,
lost their lives in the service of their Sovereign in the
civil war. These were George, a lieutenant at Liverpool,
and John, a captain at Greenhalgh, Lancashire. Mr.

g6 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Thomas Hothersall died in Maryland, in the year 1698,
aged 56 years.

1 67 1. In the mission of Maryland this year, are two
priests and two temporal coadjutors. The mission bears
no little fruit, as we learn from the last letters, and its
fruit would be still greater were the labourers more in
number. Few are living of those sent in former years.
Two died this year, Father William Pelham and Thomas
Sherborne, a lay-brother. There were fifty converts,
many of high note, and fifty-four were baptized.

1672. Two priests and two lay-brothers have laboured
diligently in the conversion of heretics and in strengthen-
ing and instructing Catholics, and no little fruit has been
gained by them this year.

Since the last account seventy-four converts have been
made and one hundred persons baptized.

1673. This year there were two priests, and a lay-
brother who attended to the temporal affairs of the mis-
sion, whilst the Fathers devoted their labours chiefly to
confirming the Catholics in their faith, and instilling unto
them the principles and practices of piety. They treated
also occasionally with the Protestants, of whom they have
reconciled twenty-eight to the Church. They baptized
seventy infants.

Two Franciscan Fathers were sent last year from Eng-
land as coadjutors in the labours of the mission, between
whom and ourselves fraternal charity and offices of mu-
tual friendship are exercised, to the common good of the
Catholic cause.

1674. There were three priests this year and one lay-
brother. Thirty-four converts were received, and sev-
enty-five baptisms administered.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 97

1677. The mission was increased at the end of the
year by two members ; one a priest and the other a lay-
brother. Brother Francis Knatchbull died here June 6th,
1677. He was admitted at Watten, November 20th,
1671, and while yet in his noviceship, being full of zeal,
he asked with great earnestness for the mission of Mary-
land, and obtained his request at the end of the year
1674 ; he lived in it only two yea r s.

According to the English Records, Francis Knatch-
bull was not a priest, but a lay-brother. Father Robert
Knatchbull, who was for some time at Ghent, and served
the Missions of Brough and Walton Hall, County York,
was a native of Maryland ; he was born in 17 16, made
his humanities at St. Omer's, and entered the Society in
1735.

GL/a/c

98 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

CHAPTER VI.

Before proceeding any further, it may be well to
devote some space to the Protestant Revolution of 1689.
We are glad to be able to state that all the non-Catholic
authors whom we had occasion to consult speak in just
and honorable terms of the Catholics of that period.
Mr. Davis, who is one of the very best authorities in
matters connected with Maryland's early history, and
who seems everywhere free from prejudice, deserves our
gratitude for the manner in which he deals with this
question. A kw words are here necessary as to the
character of St. Mary's early settlers. " These," writes
Mr. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, in his Catholic History of
North America, " were chiefly of the better classes of
England and Ireland ; educated young men in search of
employments ; heads of families in search of cheaper
subsistence; men, proud of their ancient faith, who pre-
ferred an altar in the desert to a coronet at court ; pro-
fessional or trading men, bound by interest and sympathy
to these better classes. They composed a wise and
select community worthy of their rich inheritance."
From the very beginning they treated others as they
themselves would wish to be treated. They were
neither cruel nor unjust. They dealt fairly with the
poor red men, teaching them the comforts of civilization
and the consolations of religion, and paying them with
conscientious strictness for their furs, game, and land.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 99

Vile and unscrupulous miscreants took advantage of
the friendship that existed between the Catholic settlers
and the Indians to accuse the former of a black and
horrible crime. They accused them of entering into a
compact with the Indians for the purpose of slaying all
their Protestant neighbors.

"The history of the Protestant revolution in 1689,"
writes Mr. Davis, "has never yet been fully written.
But there is evidence upon the records of the English
government to show it was the result of a panic,
produced by one of the most dishonorable falsehoods
which has ever disgraced any religious or any political
party — by the story, in a few words, that the Roman
Catholics had formed a conspiracy with the Indians, to
massacre the Protestants. The testimony comes from
the most respectable sources — not only from the mem-
bers of the Catholic Church, but also from many of the
most prominent Protestants of the province, including the
Honorable Thomas Smyth, the ancestor of the Smyths
of Trumpington, subsequently of Chestertown ; from
Major Joseph Wickes, at one time Chief Justice of the
County Court, and many years a distinguished repre-
sentative of Kent ; from the Honorable Henry De
Courcy (then written Coursey), a descendant, it is
strongly presumed, of an illustrious Anglo-Norman, and
a perfect master of the whole aboriginal diplomacy of
that period ; from Michael Taney, the high sheriff of
Calvert County, and the ancestor of the lamented Chief
Justice Taney ; from Richard Smith, a brave and gen-
erous spirit, connected with the family of Somerset,
and the forefather of the Smiths of St. Leonard's Creek,
and of the Dulanys and the Addisons ; and from Captain

IOO OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Thomas Claggett, the progenitor of the first Anglican
Bishop of Maryland." With Mr. Davis all Catholics
will heartily join in saying, "the opposition of these
Protestants is, indeed honorable, in the highest degree
to their memory."

Enough has been said to show the spirit of the party
that supplanted the Catholic Governors in St. Mary's.
What has been written will also show how powerless
were the conscientious little body of Catholics in South-
ern Maryland to stem the torrents of corruption
rebellion, fraud, and persecution that rushed in upon
them in 1689.

Coodc's rebel friends succeeded in overthrowing the
kind government of the Cal verts, and a new Governor,
Sir Lionel Copley, arrived in Maryland early in 1692,
and received control of the colony from the hands of the
" Committee of Safety."

Among those who boldly defended the fair name of
the Catholics at this period,* were Michael Taney and
Henry Darnall. Both these gentlemen were high in the
favor of the Lord Proprietary, and were honored and
respected, by all true lovers of peace and prosperity in
the province. Their letters proving the falsity of the
charges brought against the Catholics may be found in
The Day-Star. " Taney was one of the victims of a

* On an old volume, a commentary on the Psalms, we find the
following note :

Decemb. y e 29th 1685
Then was this Booke & y° other
two partes belonging to itt
Lent to Mr Cannon by mee

Henry Darnall.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. IOI

cruel imprisonment, accompanied with gross insults and
indecent taunts, in consequence of his cool and inflexible
refusal to sanction the iniquitous proceeding of Col.
Jowles and the other leaders of the Revolution." The
spirit of Michael Taney will soon be learned when we
say that he was accustomed to make his spiritual reading
out of Rodriguez. The old volume he used is in the
Newtown library and bears his name.

The success of the Revolution was the destruction of
the hopes of St. Mary's.

Having glanced at the periods preceding, and immed-
iately following, the Protestant Revolution of 1689, we
can more easily form some conception of the sufferings
and trials of the missionaries in Maryland. What they
had to endure from the cruelty and enmity of Coode
who considered them the chief cause of the opposition
he met with, and the strongest enemies of the Protestant
religion, can without difficulty be fancied. In the
Annual Letters, 1685-1690, we find the following:
" Our missions in the West Indies of Maryland, and
indeed of New York underwent the same fate with those
of England. In the latter (New York) there were only
two priests, and these were forced in this storm to
change their residence, as also the Catholic Governor
himself (Governor Dongan). One of them travelled on
foot to Maryland, the other, after many perils on the
sea, having been captured and plundered by Dutch
pirates, at length arrived safe in France. In Maryland
great difficulties are suffered. Our Fathers yet remain
to render what consolation they can to the distressed
Catholics."

After the sad and baneful overthrow of the Lord Pro-

102 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

prietary's authority the seat of government was removed
to Annapolis. The Catholics were again to be perse-
cuted, and to be made the victims of a crying injustice.
The Anglican Church was established by law in Mary-
land, and the Catholics were taxed for its support. Those
who have read and studied the history of the Established
Church in England and Ireland, can easily understand
the monstrosity of such an establishment in this country.
Catholics were obliged to build churches in which they
would never worship ; they were forced to feed parsons
whose services they would never use, to support a creed
which their conscience condemned as false.

The Brooke family in England, though a few of its
members unfortunately lost the faith, were distinguished
during the Penal Days as bold and fervent Catholics. Sir
Basil Brooke was a loyal son of the Church. Sir Robert
Brooke, who was knighted in the reign of Queen Mary,
"was always zealous in the cause of the Old Religion."
Through his influence many laws favorable to the Cath-
olics were passed in the days of Mary. We count at least
five of the Brooke family in Maryland, all natives of that
state, who became Fathers of the Society. There were
two branches of the family at an early date in Maryland.
Robt. Brooke, the founder of a Protestant settlement in
Charles county, and whose estate, De la Brooke, joined
the Fenwick Manor at Cole's Creek, as I learn from an
old survey, was at the head of one of these branches. At
the head of the other was Francis Brooke, a Catholic, and
one who was chosen by the freemen of St. Mary's hun-
dred to represent them at the Protestant Assembly of
1650. At that famous Assembly he sat at the council-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. IO3

board with Cuthbert Fenwick, Geo. Manners, John Med-
ley and Philip Land^ all Catholics like himself.

Father Robert Brooke was born in Maryland on the
24th day of October, 1663. He probably made a part of
his studies at the school opened by the Jesuits in Mary-
land in 1677. He was certainly one of those young
Marylanders who distinguished themselves at St. Omer's
and reflected much credit on their native State. His
generosity of character is shown by the fact that he en-
tered the Society in his twenty-first year, at a time when
the Church in the Colonies was suffering on all sides and
from every quarter. Stronger in him than the fear of
pains, privations, and penalties was a desire of his own
perfection, and a burning zeal for the salvation of souls.
After having made his Novitiate at Watten and his the-
ology at Li6ge he returned to Maryland about the year
1696. The afflicted state of the oppressed Catholics
must have pained and deeply wounded his priestly heart.
Just two years before his return, St. Mary's City had lost
its prestige, and Providence had become the capital —
Providence, the stronghold of Puritanism. In 17 10 Fa-
ther Brooke became Superior of the Mission. This was
then an office of much care and solicitude. It was indeed
a weighty cross. Among other troubles he had much,
very much, to suffer from Protestant intolerance. He
was tried for saying Mass at the Chapel at St. Mary's
City during Court time. Governor Seymour severely
reprimanded him, and warned him under heavy penalties
not to repeat the offence. The Sheriff of St. Mary's
County was ordered to lock up the chapel and to keep
the key in his possession. After many trials Father
Brooke died at Newtown on the 18th of July, 1714, aged

104 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

fifty-one years. He is called a " worthy Father " by
Oliver.

Richard Molyneux was born in London in 1696. He
was a missioner at Gateshead in 1724. Eleven years
afterwards he was sent to Maryland, and became its Su-
perior in 1736. He left Maryland in 1749, and was for a
time Chaplain at Marnhull (Hussey family), thence re-
moved to Bonham, county Wilts, where he died in 1766.
He was then Rector of the Residence of St. Thomas, of
Canterbury.

Father George Hunter was born in Northumberland
in 17 1 3. He entered the Society in 1730. In 1747 he
was sent on the Maryland Mission, and returned to Eng-
land in 1756. In 1759 he was again sent to Maryland.
Father Hunter was for a long time Superior of the Mis-
sion. In 1769 he went to Canada, and thence to Eng-
land again. Returning to Maryland, he died at St.
Thomas' Manor, Charles County, on the 1st of August,
1779, and was buried by the side of Fathers Kingdom
and Leonard.

Father Hunter was noted as a spiritual director, and
gave many retreats at Newtown, St. Inigoes and St.
Thomas'. It is said that two angels once took him on
a sick-call, and rowed him in a boat across the Potomac.
His vigils and fastings were extraordinary. He kept
ward over all his senses, and did as much as he could to
keep himself in recollection of the Divine Presence.

The following pious lines are taken from his diary :
" Constant recollection and ever keeping ourselves in the
presence of God, having our God constantly as a specta-
tor of all our actions, as in reality He is, are in some
sense the only means to a virtuous course of life. At

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 105

least it is certain that we cannot arrive at any degree of
perfection, or be in any degree acceptable and agreeable
to our Divine Master, without this uninterrupted recol-
lection of spirit, this uninterrupted sanctifying presence
of God."

Father Henry Poulton labored zealously for some
time at Newtown. This good religious belonged to a
family distinguished alike in Church and State. No less
than twelve of his kinsmen enrolled themselves under the
standard of St. Ignatius. His ancestors were gallant
knights who came from Normandy in the reign of Will-
iam the Conqueror. One of his blood was Thomas
Poulton, Bishop of Worcester, another was Philip Poul-
ton, Archdeacon of Gloucester. John Poulton of Des-
borough married Jane, daughter and heiress of Richard,
Lord of Desborough. It is indeed extremely probable
that had it not been for their attachment to the faith they
professed, some of the members of this branch of the
family would have been advanced to high honors ; for in
addition to being one of the oldest families in the king-
dom — descended, according to a pedigree in the College
of Arms, from old Norman Princes — the family estates
were very extensive, comprising, in addition to the lord-
ship of Desborough and other less important possessions,
manors and lands in Cransley, Kelmarsh, Broughton,
and Hargrave. The Poultons of Desborough were
staunch Catholics. At the commencement of the Civil
War they ranged themselves on the side of Charles I.,
although in his reign, as well as in the reign of James I.,
they suffered severely for their attachment to their reli-
gion, as a reference to the State Papers of those days
abundantly testifies. They were indeed supposed to have

106 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot ; and to this day
a cottage at Desborough is shown as the place where
this nefarious scheme was concocted. Concocted at
Desborough, and at the house of a tenant of John Poul-
ton, it may have been ; but that he was privy thereto
was disproved by his subsequent conduct in sacrificing
his fortune, and venturing his life in defence of his sov-
ereign. As has been said, no family in England suffered
more on account of religion and loyalty. In the reigns
of James L, and of Charles I., their estates were sequest-
ered, and they themselves repeatedly fined ; notwithstand-
ing which, throughout the Civil War, they (with perhaps
one notable exception) fought for their King, barely
escaping with their lives. At the Restoration in 1661 it
might therefore naturally have been supposed that such
devoted loyalty as was shown by the Desborough Poul-
tons would have met with some sort of recognition, or
at least that they would have been free from further per-
secutions. This, however, was not the case, and under
such circumstances as those herein briefly described, the
wonder is, not that the family estates at last passed into
other hands, but that they remained in the possession of
the same family — from father to son — for so long a
period as three hundred and seventy-five years.

The Poultons were connected by marriage with the
Palmers, Thimelbys, Coniers, and many other families
of influence and position of the same faith as themselves.
Giles Poulton, the yougest son of Giles Poulton of Des-
borough, married Alice, elder daughter and co-heiress
of Thomas More, of Burton, in the parish of Bucking-
ham, of the same family as the martyred Lord Chan-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. IO7

cellor, Sir Thomas More. Of this marriage was born
Ferdinando Poulton, the eminent lawyer.

Father Henry Poulton was the son of Ferdinand Poul-
ton, of Desborough, Esq., and Juliana, daughter of Rob-
ert Garter, of the County of Northampton. He was
born in Northamptonshire, in 1679. While still young
he was sent to St. Omer's College, where he made his
humanity studies. This college was one of the most
celebrated of all the schools opened during the Penal
Days for the instruction of the Catholic youth of the
British Empire who were denied the rights of education
at home. To it flocked the scions of the noblest Cath-
olic families of England and Ireland. In the streets of
the old town of St. Omer could be seen some of the no-
blest and bravest of the defenders of the faith in these
countries. Besides the secular college for the education
of youth there were at St. Omer a college for students
preparing for the priesthood and destined for the English
mission, a house for Irish students, and, likewise, a Jesuit
one, destined for members of the Society alone. We may
rest assured that young Poulton profited by his stay at
St. Omer's. We feel satisfied that he often felt his heart
inflamed with love for the old religion when he heard in
his foreign home of her terrible sufferings, when he was
exhorted by confessors and exiles for the faith of his
forefathers to love her with his whole heart, and, if nec-
essary, to shed his blood for her holy cause. " In the
College of St. Omer," says an old Protestant writer, " a
city in the Archduke's country, there be one hundred and
forty scholars, most of them gentlemen's sons of great
worship. And I have heard say for a truth amongst
those there be not six that ever were at any of our

108 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

churches in England, and many of them be about twenty
years of age." The reader will here recall the fact that
by one of the Penal Laws all were obliged to appear
publicly at the services of the English Established
Church. The violation of this law was the cause of the
complaint made by the bigoted writer just cited.

As Henry Poulton advanced in years and knowledge
so also did he advance in piety. Before having tasted of
the false pleasures of the world he learned to despise
them. Just when he had attained the strength and years
of manhood he heard the low, sweet voice of the Spirit
of Love calling him to a life of perfection. His generous
soul yielded to grace, and he put on the poor habit of
the sons of St. Ignatius. His choice of a state of life,
when we recall the mission of death before him iff Eng-
land, must be considered in every respect heroic. No
doubt he longed in his soul for the fate of the gentle
Robert Southwell, for the fate of him who was allied to
him by noble blood, Sir Thomas More.

After Father Poulton's studies and ordination he re-
turned to England. But we believe he was not allowed
to remain long in that country for we soon find him en-
gaged on the Maryland Mission. Of the missionary
labors of Father Poulton we have found no record. But
we can easily imagine with what zeal he labored when
we call to mind the sacrifices he made on entering
religion, the careful training he had received in fervent
St. Omer's, and the generosity with which he had left
his friends and his native land far behind him. God saw
fit not to prolong his trials in Maryland, for being ripe
for heaven, He called him to receive his eternal inherit-
ance on the 27th of September, 171 2. He died in the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. IOO,

flower of his age at the Newtown Station. He sleeps
with those good Fathers above whose graves arise no
tomb, whose very epitaphs have been left unwritten. Still,
in the Desborough Church, the church of his ancestors,
there stood a monument which bore the following in-
scription : " Sacred to the memory of the honorable
family of the Poultons, who for fourteen generations
were lords of this town of Desburgh or Desborough.
Descended from princely, most noble, illustrious and
holy progenitors of this kingdom. Besides this lordship
they possessed manors and lands in Cransley, Kelmarsh,
Broughton, and Hargrave, in this county."

Father Poulton had three brothers in the Society,
namely, Charles, Thomas, and Giles, Jun. The latter
held several important positions in the Jesuit Order, and
was usually called, on account of his virtues and meek-
ness of character, " The Angel."

Father Thomas, like Henry, was sent at an early age
to St. Omer's. There he found a vocation to religion.
Having completed his nineteenth year he entered a Jesuit
Novitiate. He was afterwards engaged in different offices
in St. Omer's. In 1730 we find him acting as Prefect at
that College. Having left St. Omer he proceeded to the
Eternal City. It was there that he made his solemn
Profession of the four vows. This was in 1734. Four
years later on he was sent to Maryland to work in that
field in which his brother had found an early grave. He
labored successfully for the good of souls in Charles,
Cecil, and St. Mary's Counties. He was Superior of the
Mission for some years. In 1746 he had twelve Fathers
and one lay -brother to assist him. In January, 1749, he
sank from his labors at Newtown. His body was laid

I IO OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

beside that of his cherished brother, Henry. " Even in
death they were not divided." There is something pa-
thetic in the thought of these worthy scions of an ancient,
princely family reposing side by side in the little grave-
yard of Newtown.

Nearly every country in Europe had at one time or
another one of its missionaries in Southern Maryland.
England, Ireland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium,
and Holland sent some of their children to work in that
chosen vineyard of the Lord. Wales, too, gave it one of
her brave sons in the person of Fr. Francis Floyd. This
devoted missionary was born in the land of St. David on
the 17th of November, 1692. He entered the Society in
his eighteenth year, the day being the 7th of September.
He was sent on the Maryland Mission in 1724. Four
years later, being distinguished by learning and virtue,
he was professed of the four vows. He labored zealously
for some time at Newtown, where he died on the 13th of
November, 1729, at the age of thirty-seven.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I I I

CHAPTER VII.

Father Thomas Hodgson was a native of Yorkshire,
England, and was born on the 2d of November, 1682.
He became a Jesuit September 3d, 1703, and was sent on
the Maryland Mission in 171 1. He departed this life
December 14th, 1726.

Father John Bennet, alias or vere Gosling, was a native
of London, and was born March 17th, 1692. He entered
the Society of Jesus September 7th, 17 10. He arrived
in Maryland about the year 1724, and labored in that
Mission for some years. About the year 1750 he was a
missioner at Lytham, County Lancaster. He died at
Highfield, near Wigan, April 2d, 175 I, at the age of fifty-
nine.

Father Joseph or Josiah Greaton was born in London
on the 2d of February, 1679. On July the 5th, 1708, he
entered a Jesuit Novitiate. According to a paper in the
Jesuit Archives he was sent to Maryland in 172 1. " Oli-
ver calls Father Greaton the Apostle of Pennsylvania, as
he toiled in that State for nearly twenty years before
going to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He was the
founder of Catholicity in Philadelphia ; at first his con-
gregation numbered eleven persons. This is said on the
authority of Mr. Westcott. St. Joseph's Church, together
with the residence in Willing's Alley, was built by Father
Greaton in 1733."

112 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Archbishop Carroll thus refers to Father Greaton :
" About the year 1730, or rather later, Father Greaton, a
Jesuit (for none but Jesuits had yet ventured into the
English Colonies), went from Maryland to Philadelphia,
and laid the foundations of that congregation, now so
flourishing ; he lived there till the year 1750, long before
which he had succeeded in building the old chapel,
which is still contiguous to the presbytery of that town,
and in assembling a numerous congregation which, at
his first going thither did not consist of more than ten
or twelve persons. I remember to have seen this vener-
able man at the head of his flock in 1748."

The first Jesuits who labored in Pennsylvania came
from the Maryland Mission. Though there was much
work to be done on the banks of the Patuxent, Potomac,
and Elk Rivers, still the missionaries at Newtown, St.
Inigoes, and especially Bohemia, a little later on, could
not neglect altogether the souls of those of the House-
hold of Faith who dwelt on the shores of the Delaware
and on the wooded mountains of Penn's Plantation.
Though no Proprietary invited them, though no Gov-
ernor encouraged them, still the Jesuits of Maryland
often penetrated the stronghold of Quakerism, disguised
and in secret, and ministered to the wants of the few
scattered Catholics of Pennsylvania, who had as yet no
resident priest among them. During the few short years
that New York possessed English Jesuits, it is almost
certain that the Philadelphia Catholics were visited by
missionaries from the banks of the Hudson. But it was
years after the death of Harvey, Harrison, and Gage that
the first Jesuit residence was built in the City of Brotherly
Love.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. II3

" Previous to the year 1733," says an old paper before
me, "the few Catholics who then resided in Philadelphia,
held meetings for religious worship in a private dwelling;
for the public exercise of the Catholic religion was not
permitted, according to the laws of England, which pre-
vailed in America at that epoch. In the above year, the
Rev. Mr. Greaton, a priest of the Order of Jesuits, pur-
chased lots near Fourth Street, between Walnut and
Willing's Alley, and erected thereon a small chapel, ded-
icated to St. Joseph, which has since been enlarged."

We lately found an interesting paper relating to the
first visit of Father Joseph Greaton to Philadelphia. On
this paper we find the following note : " This I have
heard from Archbishop Neale, the 4th of December,
l8i5,the first day he was Archbishop of Baltimore."
The document itself is as follows : " Mr. Greaton, one
of the Jesuits of Maryland, being informed that in Phila-
delphia there was a great number of Catholics, resolved
to try to establish a mission for their spiritual comfort.
In order to succeed the better he went first to Lancaster
where he had an acquaintance by the name of Mr.
Doyle. The object of his journey was to know from his
friend the name of some respectable Catholic in Philadel-
phia, to whom he could address himself, and by whom
he could be seconded in his laudable exertions to found
there a mission. Mr. Doyle directed him to an old
lady, very respectable for her wealth, and still more for
her attachment to the Catholic Religion. Father
Greaton on his arrival at Philadelphia presented himself
dressed like a Quaker to the lady, and after the usual
compliments, he turned his conversation on the great
number of sectaries who were in that city. The lady

I 14 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

made a long enumeration of them — Quakers, Presby-
terians, Lutherans, Church of England members, Baptists,
etc., etc. The Father then asked her : ' Pray, madam,
are there here any of those who are called Papists ?'

1 Yes,' she replied, ' there is a good number.'

1 Are you one ?' asked the Father.

The lady stopped a little, and then acknowledged that
she was.

* I am one too,' added the priest.

This gave rise to many other questions, among which
was the following : ' Have the Catholics any Church ?'
The lady answered : ' No, they have none.'

' Do you think that they would be glad to have one ?'
continued Father Greaton.

' Most certainly, sir, but the great difficulty is to find a
priest.'

1 Are there no priests in America ?'

' Yes, there are some in Maryland, but it would be
impossible to get priests from that quarter.'

* No, not impossible,' said the missionary, ' I myself
am one at your service.'

' Is it true !' asked the lady with warm interest, ' is it
true that you are a priest !'

1 Yes, madam, I assure you I am a priest.'
" The good lady could not contain her joy to see after
so many years a Catholic priest, and like the Samaritan
woman who, having found our Lord Jesus Christ, ran to
announce it to the citizens of Samaria, she went through
the neighborhood and invited her Catholic acquaintances
to come and see a Catholic priest in her house. This
was soon filled with Catholics, for the most part Ger-
mans. Then Father Greaton began to expose to them

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I 1 5

the object of his journey. At that very meeting a sub-
scription was opened to raise sufficient funds to buy lots,
and build a Catholic church. All willingly contributed
to this good work. They bought lots and a house of
their hostess, who acted in a very generous manner."

Father Greaton died on the 19th of August, 1753.
From an old catalogue I learn that Father John Lewis
" officiated at his funeral."

Father Thomas Mansell, alias Harding, was born in
Oxfordshire in the year 1669. Having studied human-
ities at St. Omer's College, he entered the Jesuit Order
on the 7th of September, 1686. In 1700, having been
ordained priest some time previous, he was sent on the
Maryland Mission. Father Mansell's name is closely
interwoven with the history of the mission of Bohemia,
Cecil County, Md. The following passages from an
able article on Bohemia, in the Woodstock Letters, will
not, therefore, be out of place :

The Fathers of St. Mary's were ever on the alert to
seize any opportunity of spreading the Gospel. Re-
strained by unjust laws which, on occasions, were
almost as inflexible as those of the penal code in
England, they nevertheless were untiring in their efforts
in the midst of hardships and dangers. Their bitter foes
of the Established Church, the Puritans no less hostile,
false brethren, who, be it said, were by God's grace, very
few, might pass still severer laws against the faith, but
they could not quench the zeal of the sons of St.
Ignatius. Crippled in resources, doubly taxed to
support the Established Church and the government,
the Fathers found means to keep alive their enterprises,
and to bring the word to many souls in danger of losing

Il6 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

the faith. In 1704, Father William Hunter, the Superior
of the Maryland Mission, determined to found a new
centre of apostolic work in Cecil County, on a part of
what was called Bohemia Manor. He had been led to
take this step by the needs of some Irish families, who
had settled there, of whom some unhappily had fallen
into heresy. Catholics from St. Mary's County or from
England, who had also taken up their abode near
Bohemia, claimed the attention of the Superior ; and he
was most willing to help them, though at the time there
were but nine Fathers in the Mission which embraced
all the counties then formed on the Western Shore of
the State. No doubt, the faithful in Cecil County had
been visited now and then by the Jesuits of St. Mary's
County. But the Indian tribes offered special attractions
to the zealous missionaries.

Father Thomas Mansell was chosen to undertake the
work. The Superior had made a good choice. Father
Mansell was a man of learning, having just made his
profession in February of this year (1704) ; he was well
acquainted with the Mission, in which he had labored
for four years, and knew the toil and sacrifice expected
of him. Moreover, great zeal for souls, in which he
imitated his brother, Father William, and the vigor of
age attracted the eyes of the Superior towards him.
Leaving St. Mary's in 1704, Father Mansell sailed to the
Chesapeake and up this inland sea to Elk River, turning
a few miles above its mouth into Bohemia River. A
short sail now brought him to Little Bohemia creek, and
to the landing not far from the present residence. Here
he founded the first Mission for the Eastern Shore of the
State. " It is highly probable," says Mr. Johnston,

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I \J

u that he brought with him the ancient cross, which has
been at Bohemia ever since. This cross is about five
feet high and is said to have been brought to St. Mary's
by the first settlers who came there from England. It is
made of wrought iron and certainly looks ancient
enough to have been brought over by the Pilgrims, who
came in the Ark and the Dove!'

Father Mansell must have had his dwelling in what is
now the kitchen of the residence. The first chapel was
close by ; it was torn down and enlarged at the end of
the last century.

Oliver says that Father Mansell " zealously cultivated
the Maryland Mission until his death, on the 1 8th of
March, 1724."

The name of Peter Atwood is written on' the pages of
several books in the Newtown Library. Father Atwood
came from Worcestershire, England. He was born in
1682, on the 1 8th of October. His mother was Wini-
fred Petre, of Belhouse, near Kelvedon, the seat of the
Stanford Rivers branch of the Petre family. On his
mother's side he was of noble descent, and was con-
nected not only with some of the most distinguished
Priests of England, but also with several illustrious
members of the laity who suffered for the Catholic Faith
in the' black Tower of London. His father was George
Atwood of Beverie, near Worcester. The Atwoods
suffered much on account of their constancy in the
Faith. One of them, a Dominican priest, was put upon
the hurdle because he held fast to the doctrine handed
down from the Apostles.

Our young missionary made his humanities at St.
Omer's College. Being called to a religious life he

I l8 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

entered the Society in September, 1703. He made his
novitiate amid the deep solitude that reigned around the
Watten House. No doubt he was one of those novices
who gave instructions to the children of the neighboring
rural districts. About the time that he was making his
theological studies at Liege we learn that great zeal for
the salvation of souls animated the students in that city.
Some of them spent all their free time in instructing and
preparing for confession many heretical English, Irish,
and Scotch soldiers, and would bring them when ready
to a confessor in the Church. Before he left, it is said,
that the Fathers devoted their chief care to the sick and
wounded English soldiers, besides visiting those in good
health, of whom they brought many into the Church,
and assisted numbers at death, while quartered here.
Many general confessions were heard, but the greatest
praise and highest success of the College of Liege was
its own progress towards perfection, in peace, union,
fervor, and regular religious observance, combined with
the care, labor, and industry of the professors towards
all.

Father Atwood left the quiet and peace of his Liege
room and entered upon his missionary life in Maryland
in 171 1. He labored zealously 1 in Charles County, and
also in Cecil County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
He seems to have succeeded Father Thomas Mansell, as
Superior of Bohemia Manor. "In 1732," writes Mr.
Johnston in his History of Cecil County, " Peter Atwood,
who is then said to be of St. Mary's County, purchased
another tract of land called ' Askmore,' from Vachel
Denton. This tract was supposed to contain 550 acres,
and had been granted to John Browning and Henry

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I 19

Denton in 1668. Denton claimed it by right of sur-
vivorship, and from him it descended to his son, Vachel
Denton, who as before stated, sold it to Atwood."

The Annual Letter for 1728, informs us that Father
Atwood was then Superior of the Mission with eleven
Fathers and three lay-brothers to assist him. The
Fathers were scattered throughout an immense tract of
country and strenuously labored in protecting and
propagating the Catholic Faith. The temporal coadjutors
attended to domestic affairs, and the cultivation of the
land, the product of which supported the missioners.
Besides the land, there was no other source of support
belonging to the mission. On this subject Arch-
bishop Carroll wrote : " Catholics contributed nothing
to the support of Religion or its ministers; the whole
charge of its maintenance, of furnishing the altars, of
traveling expenses, fell on the priests themselves ; and
no compensation was ever offered for any service per-
formed by them ; nor did they require any, so long as
the produce of their lands was sufficient to answer their
demands. But it must have been foreseen, that if
religion should make considerable progress, this could
not always be the case."

During Father Atwood's missionary life in Maryland
many cruel and despotic laws were made in that
Province against all professing the Catholic Faith.
£100 reward was offered to any one who should
11 apprehend and take a Popish Bishop, Priest or Jesuit,
and prosecute him until convicted of saying Mass, or of
exercising any other part of the office or function of a
Popish Bishop or Priest" Catholics were forbidden the
rights of education at home, and they were not allowed

120 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

under heavy penalties to send their children to the
Catholic schools of the Old Continent. One of the
stanzas in the poem of Thomas Davis on the Penal
Days in Ireland, with very slight modification, would
naturally find a place here :

" They bribed the flock, they bribed the son,
To sell the priest and rob the sire ;
Their dogs were taught alike to run
Upon the scent of wolf and friar.
Among the poor,
Or on the moor,
Were hid the pious and the true."

So galling were the Penal enactments enforced in Fa-
ther Atwood's days that he and a great number of
prominent Catholic gentlemen conceived the plan of
flying from persecution to one of the French settlements.
This was what their fathers had done before them when
they sailed away from England, when they hastily passed
down by the Lizzard Rocks on the coast of their native
land. " Charles Carroll and his brother James were at
the head of the movement, and among those who in-
tended to join it we find the names of Henry Darnall,
Henry Darnall, Jr., William Diggs, John Diggs, Benja-
min Hall, Clement Hall, William Fitz Redmond, Henry
Wharton, Charles Diggs, Major Nicholas Sewell, and
Richard Bennett."

On Christmas Day, 1734, Father Atwood, being Su-
perior of the Mission, while notes of gladness filled the
earth, and our churches, in Catholic countries, at least,
rang with the " Gloria in Excelsis," yielded up his faith-
ful soul to God in one of the chambers of the Newtown
Manor.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 121

On the 5th of January of the same year, one of the
young Fathers died on the Maryland Mission, and very
probably at Newtown. This was Father John Fleetwood.
This Father was a native of London, and was born in
the year 1703. He was, perhaps, one of the Fleetwoods
of Drury Lane. This was the favorite haunt of the
Catholics during the Penal Times. In a very old work
I find : " The Provincial of the English Jesuits often
stayed at Mrs. Fleetwood's house, in Drury Lane."

After his priesthood our youthful missionary labored
with courage and zeal at Broughton Hall, County York,
England. This was the seat of the ancient family of
Tempest, and was a chaplaincy and mission of the Resi-
dence of St. Michael the Archangel. We may easily
imagine how Broughton Hall was watched by spies, and
considered a dangerous post for a missionary, when we
remember that Father Nicholas Tempest had been one
*of Oates' victims.

Father John was. probably the brother of Father Wal-
ter Fleetwood, a distinguished English missionary, and
one whom we find at Liege in the time of Father Jenkins
and others of the Maryland Fathers. Father Walter
.Fleetwood " is named in a curious old pamphlet, entitled
The Present State of Popery in England (1733), as having
kept the Catholic school at Twyford, Hants, where Pope,
the poet, passed some part of his youth. The school is
represented as containing upwards of one hundred schol-
ars at that time (1733), and was chiefly under the care and
direction of one Father Fleetwood. Dr. Husenbeth
states that this ' Fleetwood left Twyford about the year
1732, and, after living a short time at Paynsley, went to

122 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Liege, and became a Jesuit.' ' He was, I presume, of the
Fleetwood family of Calwich, County Stafford.' "

Father John Fleetwood came to Maryland in 1733.
The days of his toils and pains were not long on that
mission. He had not labored many months here before
God in His Infinite Wisdom saw fit to call him to receive
his eternal reward. Fleetwood Joaiines is inscribed on
one of the Newtown Library books. In a former chap-
ter we said that most of the missionaries were distin-
guished students. Is it not a touching fact that the only
epitaphs written for them were written by their own
hands when they wrote their names upon the books they
loved and studied in their youth ? In the library, and
not on marble monuments in the graveyard, we find the
names of the missionaries written.

One hundred years after the Act of Toleration was
passed a young Irish Jesuit, Father James Carroll, came
to Maryland to fulfil in part the Mission of the Irish'
race. With all the zeal of a generous and faithful soul
who had seen the sufferings of Mother Church both in
England and in Ireland, he set out upon his missionary
labors. With the fire and eloquence of an apostle he
preached the sublime doctrine of "Jesus, and Him Cru-
cified." But he did not last long. After about seven
years on the Maryland Mission he had a holy end at
Newtown.

About two years before Father Carroll's death he was
joined in his labors by Father Michael Murphy, also a
native of Ireland. This Father was born on the 1 8th of
September, 1725. Having made a great part of his
studies in the " Island of Saints and Doctors," and hav-
ing witnessed the desecration and profanation of sacred

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 23

vessels and holy altars ; having seen the pillage and the
burning of grey abbeys and ivied convents, he left his
native land and became a member of the English Prov-
ince. This was on the 7th day of September, 1745. On
the very same day, and probably at the same moment,
another young Irish student entered the Novitiate at
Watten. This youth's name was John Butler. Father
John Butler, who became, on the death of his brother,
the tenth Lord Cahir, was the son of Thomas, eighth
Lord Cahir, and his wife Frances, daughter of Sir Theo-
bald Butler. He was born on the 8th of August, 1727,
and received his education at St. Omer's. After his or-
dination he took charge of the Mission of Hereford. In
1778 he was almost universally nominated by the Pre-
lates of Ireland to fill the vacant See of Limerick, and
the nomination was actually confirmed by the Holy See,
and the bulls had arrived in Ireland ; but Father Butler,
who had protested from the first against the violence
done to his humility and the retirement he so much
loved, resolutely refused to accept the dignity, and died
in his holy obscurity at Hereford.

Nine years after his entrance into the Society Father
Murphy was sent on the Maryland Mission. On July
the 8th, 1759, he peacefully expired at the Newtown
Manor. His missionary life though brief, was very suc-
cessful, and full of merit.

From the Newtown Note-Book I learn that Father
Wappeler was on Britton's Neck in May, 1744. Wil-
helm Wappeler was a native of Numan Sigmaringen,
Westphalia, and was the worthy uncle of the Rev. Her-
man Kemper, " one of the ablest scholars and most val-
uable members of the Fnglish Province." Wappeler was

124 nLn CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

bom January the 22d, 171 1. Twenty-seven years after
he assumed the habit of St. Ignatius.

" In 1741," says a distinguished writer, "two German
Jesuits were sent to Pennsylvania for the instruction and
conversion of German emigrants, who from many parts
of Germany had come into that Province. Under great
hardships and poverty they began their laborious under-
taking, which has since been followed by great benedic-
tions. Their names were Father Schneider, from Bavaria,
and Father Wappeler, from the Lower Rhine. They
were both men of much learning and unbounded zeal.
Mr. Schneider, moreover, was a person of great dex-
terity in business, consummate prudence, and undaunted
magnanimity. Mr. Wappeler having remained about
eight years in America, and converted and reclaimed
many to the Faith of Christ, was forced by bad health to
return to Europe. He was the person who made the
first settlement of the place called Conewago."

The first Catholic Church built at Conewago is thus
described by a recent writer : " It was a small log church
with two rooms attached, in or near the site of the pres-
ent edifice. The style of the architecture gave the build-
ing the appearance of a private dwelling ; and it was
chosen to conform to and not to violate the letter, if not
the spirit of the stringent Penal Laws then in force in
the colonies."

In 1754, and for some years later, we find Father
Wappeler as Prefect of St. Omer's College. He after-
wards labored on the English Mission in the Yorkshire
District and at Liverpool. He spent some time at Ghent
and Bruges. He died in the latter city, and was there
interred amid the ringing of " sweet cathedral bells."

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 125

On his death Bishop Carroll wrote : " Father Wappeler's
candor and artless disposition of heart always endeared
him to me."

Father Wappeler had been at Ghent during the sup-
pression of the College in 1773, and was examined before
the Commissioners. In the Life of St. Thomas of Here-
ford, written by Father Constantine Susysken, the Bol-
landist, we find a letter of this Father, on " the Relick
of St. Thomas." As many of the missionaries of Mary-
land spent some time in Ghent before beginning their
apostolate in the New World, it may be interesting to
the reader to learn something about the Jesuit house
there. It is the writer's impression that this building still
stands, and was pointed out to him some few years past.

" The (English) House of the Third Probation was
opened about the middle of the month of August, 162 1
(at Ghent). It was founded by the pious bounty of Anne
Dacre, Countess of Arundel and Surrey, a warm and
sincere friend of the Society of Jesus. She was widow
of Philip, Earl of Arundel, who died in the Tower of
London, October 19th, 1595, a martyr for the Catholic
Faith, after an imprisonment of ten years and a half, not
without suspicion of having been poisoned. Hither the
veterans often retired to prepare themselves for the last
passage into eternity. Dodd observes : ' About these
times also, in 1622, the Jesuits purchased a house in
Ghent, which was to be a- place of residence for such of
their Fathers as were disabled either through age or in-
firmity, or any other way rendered unserviceable for the
mission.' "

The principal object, however, of the College, was for

126

OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

the use of the Fathers* making their third year's pro-
bation, after completing their studies and course of teach-
ing, before the solemn professions of the last vows- of
religion.

In 1767-8 the Novitiate, or House of First Probation,
was removed from Watten to Ghent, which then became
the House of the First and Third Year's Probation.

At the suppression in 1773 it shared in the fate of the
other Continental Colleges.

* In a letter from Ghent for 1624, we find: " The Fathers in the
third year's probation added to other duties (as in former years)
the hearing the confessions of English, Irish, and Scotch soldiers,
whether of those escaped from Holland, or of the Spanish auxil-
iary camp in the neighborhood. About ten English gentlemen,
some of them of high families, made retreats here with much fruit,
especially in the case of three who decided upon leaving the world
and entering upon a religious life."

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. \2J

CHAPTER VIII.

It seems likely that Father Robert Harding spent
some time at Newtown. At all events, I found his name
on one of the books there. Father Harding was born
on the 6th of October, 1701. Having pursued his
studies in one of the English Colleges. on the Continent
he caught the flame of the apostolic fire that burned and
glowed around him. In his twenty-first year he became
a fervent novice of the Society of Jesus. About eleven
years afterwards he was sent on the Maryland Mission.
He became distinguished as a missionary in Pennsyl-
vania. He succeeded Father Greaton as Pastor of the
old church in Philadelphia. Under his patronage, and
through his exertions, St. Mary's Church was built. He
was untiring in his labors in behalf of his little flock.
" In the meanwhile," says a Philadelphia writer, " Father
Harding was not idle at old St. Joseph's. He instructed
the faithful and buried his beloved dead in the little
' God's Acre ' west of the Church, whose humble mounds
were shaded by two gigantic Walnut trees. It was
rather the increasing demand for resting places for those
who ' sleep in the Lord,' than the increased number of
those ' fighting the combat ' that induced Father Hard-
ing, in 1763, to employ the money of Father Greaton in
purchasing ' St. Mary's Burying Ground ' — and building
that Church, which, in 18 10, was enlarged to its present

128 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

noble dimensions. Father Harding also assisted Father
Farmer in his missionary duties, and so arduous were
his labors that he died at St. Joseph's, Philadelphia, on
the 1st of September, i7/j;Vbeloved by all and keenly,
bitterly, and affectionately remembered."

Father Harding certainly labored at St. Thomas,
Charles County, and likewise in Prince George's, Mary-
land. Archbishop Carroll refers to Father Harding as
one "whose memory remains in great veneration."

The following are the opening words in Mr, Harding's
Will : " First, I bequeath my soul to God, hoping
through the infinite merits of our only Saviour Jesus
Christ, to obtain life everlasting, and my body to be
decently interred."

In the Newtown Library I find on a copy of the New
Testament, published in 1582 — "Jacobus Breadnall,
1769, Societatis Jesu." Father Breadnall was born on
the 8th of April, 17 18. In his twenty-first year he en-
tered the Society. He was enrolled among the Professed
Fathers eighteen years later on. In 1749 he was at St.
Thomas'. From the very foundation of the Maryland
Mission up to the present time it has been customary for
the Fathers to say Mass in private houses. This is to
enable all, even those persons who live at a great distance
from any church, to assist at the . Holy Sacrifice. In
times of persecution, when all the churches were closed,
or in the hands of our enemies, of course it was abso-
lutely necessary, if the people were to hear Mass at all,
that the missionaries should celebrate in some farm-
house or manor. This they usually did. What a
beautiful picture it is to see the priest in some neat little
room, surrounded by a band of pious and faithful wor-

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 29

shippers, offering up the Immaculate Lamb to the
greater glory of God, and for the atonement of the sins
of mankind. It seems that in Father Breadnall's time
this pious practice of celebrating in private houses was
forbidden by the bigots of Maryland. Indeed, we read
that he was indicted for saying Mass in this manner.
He was also tried for endeavoring " to bring over a non-
juror person to the Romish persuasion." With regard
to the charge of saying Mass he was acquitted, as he
proved that he was allowed to offer up the Holy Sacri-
fice " by an order issued by her Majesty, Queen Anne,
dated at Whitehall, January 3d, 1 705-6." As the second
charge was not proved, he was set free. Father Bread-
nail died in Maryland on the 9th of April, 1772.

Father John Lewis* was a native of Northamptonshire,
born September the 19th, 1721. He made his humanity
studies at the famous College of St. Omer's, that illus-
trious home of confessors, scholars, and martyrs. On
September 7th, 1740, he entered the Society at Watten.
He was professed of the four vows, February 2d, 1758.
In the same year he was sent to Maryland. He labored
in different parts of that Mission with great success. In
1753 ne was engaged in missionary work at Bohemia.
He was at Bohemia also in 1758. In 1765 he labored

* During the Revolutionary War, in 1778, the " Geneial Monk,''
a British sloop of war, anchored off St. Inigoes, fired a ball through
the house, which was near killing the Rev. Mr. Lewis, who had
just left his bed, over which the ball passed. The fracture of the
wall, produced by the ball in its passage through, may be seen at
the present day, near the corner of the northwest chamber on the
first floor. Bishop Fenwick.

I3O OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

at White Marsh.* In 1769 he was at St. Inigoes. On
an old and torn sheet of paper we find — " Appendix to
y e first page." On this paper may be read the following
address : " To the Rev' 1 Mr. John Lewis, at Newtown, in
St. Mary's County." Near the address we read : " To
be put in y f Post-office at Annapolis and forwarded with
care and speed." The reason why the letter was sent
from Annapolis and not from Bohemia is told in the let-
ter itself in a P. S. : "You rather send y e letter to Mr.
Mosley if you write to me ; for if you write by y e Post
y° letter in all probability will be intercepted. I have
reason to suspect it, because they would not let this letter
go Willi / Post, but zuas obliged to take it home again, and
to try another channel" It is evident from the tone of
the letter that at the precise time it was written Father
Lewis was Superior. Father Manners begs of him to
write regarding the business on hand as soon as possible,
and adds : " be sure your order shall be punctually ob-
served, and complied with to a tittle." He reminds
Father Lewis to write Warwick legibly, otherwise, he
says, " y e letter will go to Frederick Town and be put into
y e office, where it may lie for half a year, as it happened
in Mr. Harding's time; for they never will send it except
they meet with an accidental opportunity." In Father
Mosley's "Day Book" for 1764, I find the following
references to Father Lewis: " 1764, Aug t 1 ith, I arrived
at Bohemia with Mr. Lewis:" "Aug* 14th, Mr. Lewis
returned." From the same Book we learn that Father

* White Marsh is situated about midway between Annapolis
and Washington, in Prince George's County, Md. It came into
the possession of the Society in 1760. It is a place of deep his-
toric interest.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I3I

Lewis was at Bohemia from the 17th of November, 1764
to the 2 1st of the said month. The following entries by-
Father Lewis are found in Mosley's " Ordo :" " 5th June,
1787 : Buried Jenny Parks at St. Joseph's. Eodem die,
R. Jos. Mosley in y e Chapel. R. I. Pace. — J. Lewis."

From the year 1634 to a date nearly 150 years nearer
our time, the English Province continued to send learned
and zealous missionaries to Maryland. Though engaged
in a continual and deadly fight with error and corruption
in England, though persecuted and bleeding from every
pore, still she generously spared some of her tried and
devoted sons for the arduous and, at times, perilous
Mission on the borders of the Chesapeake. She sent to
Maryland apostolic men like White, Altham, Morgan,
Copley, Sewall, Hartwell, Chamberlain, Casey, Cooper,
Roels, Carteret, Lawson, O'Reilly, Diderick, De Ritter,
Geisler, Phillips, Beeston, Brown, Harrison, and Scaris-
brick. Despite hardships and persecutions, these true
sons of St. Ignatius heroically kept the Banner of the
Cross triumphantly waving. While some of them labored
among the settlers and slaves and red men of the Eastern
and- Western Shores of Maryland, others preached in
Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York. Their
motto was — " To The Greater Glory Of God." They
preached Jesus and Him Crucified. Like the Crusaders
of old they cried out in chorus — " Not to us, O Lord,
give glory, but to Thy Name." Dwelling in the forests
with the red men, occupied in the " quarters " of the poor
colored slaves, they knew little of the evils in store for
them. They knew, it is true, that the princes and the
mighty ones of the earth stood in judgment against
them. They knew that the French philosophers and

132 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Jansenists hated them with a relentless hatred. They
knew that their brothers in France were accused of
regicide and immorality by Le Pelletier de St. Fargean
and Chauvelin. They knew that they had bitter ene-
mies in D'Aranda, Choiseul and Pombal ; in Manuel de
Roda, Campomanes, Grimaldi, Monino, and the Duke of
Alva; but in the innocence and purity of their conscience
they feared not. Judge then of their sorrow when they
learned of the total suppression of the entire Society
throughout the world. Picture to yourselves their grief
when they received the Papal Brief and the following
letter that came in a small ship from the coast of Eng-
land :

" To Mess rs . the Missioners in Maryland and Pennsyl-
vania :
To obey the orders I have received from above, I
notify to you by this the Breve, of the total dissolution
of the Society of Jesus ; and send withal a form of de-
claration of your obedience and submission, to which
you are all to subscribe as your brethren have done
here ; and send me back the formula with the subscrip-
tions of you all, as I am to send them up to Rome.
Ever Yours,

Richard Deboren, V. Ap."
"October 6th, 1773."

Like true followers of Ignatius they bowed their heads
in perfect submission. Like their Brethren of Europe,
of Asia, and of Africa, they bent in reverence before the
decree of the Vicar of Christ. They urged not their

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 133

innocence ; they pointed not to their labors. They heard
and obeyed.

The following note is so pertinent to the present sub-
ject that I think it well to give it here :

" The Brief of Suppression was ordered into execution
in such a way that it was to take effect only when it had
been communicated by the Bishop to the local Superior
within his jurisdiction. As the Mission of Maryland
formed a part of the London District, it devolved upon
Bishop Challoner to notify Father John Lewis, Superior
in 1773, of the Suppression. After the dissolution of
the Society, Father Lewis was appointed Vicar-General,
and continued to govern the Mission in America for the
English Bishop, during the seven years of the Revolu-
tionary struggle. * * * * After the termination of
the war, Father Lewis was unanimously chosen Superior
at a meeting of the clergy of the Southern District of
Maryland, held at Newtown September 23d, 1783. At
this meeting were present Benedict Neale, Ignatius Mat-
thews, James Walton, Peter Morris, John Bolton, John
Boarman, and Augustine Jenkins ; Mr. Matthews col-
lected also the votes of Benjamin Roels and Leonard
Neale, who were absent."

At the time of the Suppression there were twenty
Fathers working zealously in various parts of the Mis-
sion. These Fathers were John Ashton, Thomas
Digges, James Framback, Ferdinand Farmer, Lucas
Geisler, George Hunter, John Lewis, John Lucas, Mat-
thias Manners, Ignatius Matthews, Peter Morris, Joseph
Mosley, Benedict Neale, James Pellentz, Lewis Roels,
Bernard Rich (Diderick), J. B. Ritter (de), James Wal-
ton, John Bolton, and Robert Molyneux. Besides these

134 0LD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

the Mission had some subjects pursuing their studies in
Europe at the time of the Suppression. From the Bea-
dle's Diary, lately published in the Letters and Notices,
we learn that on the suppression of the College at Liege
some of the Fathers and scholastics almost immediately
left that city. Ignatius Brooke left Liege on Monday,
September 27th ; Charles Neale, Francis Beeston, and
Joseph Boone, September 29th ; Charles Boarman, Sep-
tember 30th.

From an old document we learn that Father Lewis
died at Bohemia, March 24th, 1788.

Father Joseph Mosley, alias Joseph Framback, was
the brother of Father Michael, who was for some time
Superior of the Residence of St. Winifred, and who died
at Holy Well. He was born in Lincolnshire, in 1730,
and studied his humanities at St. Omer's College. He
entered the Society in his eighteenth year. Early in 1759
he was a missioner at Bromley, in the College of the
Holy Apostles. Though the Collectanea says he was
sent to Maryland about 1764, we know from unquestion-
able sources that he came here at least five years before
that time. From his own writings I know that he spent
the Easter of 1759 at St. Joseph's Forest in Maryland.
In his Ordo B "ap tiz a torn m, which was kindly sent us from
the Archives of the Maryland Province, we find the date
1760. Some may think that he brought this "Ordo"
from England, but on the first page we read : " St. Jo-
seph's, St. Mary's County, Christenings of Jos. Mosley,
1760." Besides, I find in an old Catalogue : " 1760,
Joseph Mosley at Newtown." Mr. George Johnston, the
historian of Cecil County, says that Mosley was at Bo-
hemia in 1760. This * s a mistake. He himself says in

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 35

his " Day Book," as we noted elsewhere, that he arrived
at Bohemia, August nth, 1764, in company with Father
John Lewis. There is also the authority of an old cata-
logue for saying that he did not arrive at Bohemia before
that year. From his " Day Book " we learn that on the
31st of August, 1764, he began his "journey and Mis-
sion in Queen Ann's and Talbot County." On Septem-
ber 2d he " first kept Church in Queen Ann's Cty." On
the 9th of the same month he " first kept Church in Tal-
bot Cty." On the 5th of October he received a visit
" from Mr. Harding, who arriv'd from Philadelphia." On
the 15th of October Mr. Harding returned to Philadel-
phia and he accompanied him thither. On that occasion
he received from " Mr. Manners 4£ cur. for Paint for y e
House." On the 21st of October he "preached at Phil-
adelphia in y e old chapel." On the 23d of October he
left Philadelphia in company with Mr. Harding. On the
next day, having parted with Mr. Harding on the way,
he arrived at Bohemia. In 1765, he settled at St. Jo-
seph's, Talbot County. The precise day was the 1 8th of
March. On the 2d of February, 1766, he had the hap-
piness of making his religious profession to Father Far-
mer. In a catalogue we find "Joseph Mosley, 1769, at
St. Joseph's, E. S." On the 15th of June, 1775, he had
the sad privilege of burying Father Matthias Manners,
who died at Peace with God and man, at Bohemia. Fa-
ther Mosley himself died at St. Joseph's Station, June-
3d, 1787, aged fifty-six years. He was interred in the
chapel which he himself had erected.

Father Mosley kept a very faithful record of all mar-
riages, burials, baptisms, and conversions. He also took
note of the numbers of confessions he heard, and the

I36 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

number of times he distributed the Holy Eucharist. In
his Note-Book we find : " Confessions received at Easter

and Communicants from y" year 1759 to A. D.

1787." During the Easter-time of the year 1759, in St.
Joseph's Forest, he heard 1078 confessions. Out of this
number 945 were communicants. At Easter, 1760 and
1 76 1, the number of confessions and communions was
nearly the same as in 1759. It seems that in 1762 he
was no longer in St. Joseph's Forest, for in that year he
states that he heard 955 confessions " in Sakia and New-
port." In 1763, and up to August in 1764, he continued
to labor with much fruit at Sakia and Newport.

If the zeal of Father Mosley was great while among
the Catholics of St. Mary's County, it burst into a bright
and all-consuming flame on his arrival on the Eastern
Shore. Here he found few members of the true fold.
And sad it is to relate, that some who had been brought
up in the Catholic Faith had grown cold, and others,
alas, had fallen away altogether from the Church. One
of the principal causes of these losses was the lack of
priests and Catholic teachers. Persecution, too, had
much to do with them. " There is reason to believe,"
writes the historian of Cecil County, " that the Protest-
ants of Sassafras Neck, Middle Neck, and Bohemia
Manor petitioned the legislature at the session of 1756,
praying that stringent measures might be taken against
the Jesuits. At all events the lower house at this session
was about to pass a very stringent bill prohibiting the
importation of Irish Papists via Delaware, under a pen-
alty of £20 each, and denouncing any Jesuit or Popish
priest as a traitor who tampered with any of his Majes-
ty's subjects in the colony." It is true, that, owing to

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 37

the governor's " having prorogued the legislature shortly
after it was introduced," the bill did not pass ; but still
private, petty, harassing, cunning persecutions went on
everywhere in Cecil County. It is no wonder then that
under the bonnet of a Quaker lady could be seen the
meek face of a little. Rachel Murphy; it is no wonder
that one sometimes met a gentleman with a broad-
brimmed hat who was known to his neighbors as Eph-
raim O'Keefe. Among the converts made by Father
Mosley I find a Rachel McGonigal. Among the con-
verts made by Father John Bolton, after the death of
Mosley, I find Mary O'Keefe, Jonathan Callahan, and
" an Irish woman at Mr. Summer's, called Catharine
Murphy."

Father James Farrar was enrolled among the sons of
St. Ignatius in 1725. His name occurs for the first time
in old catalogues for the Maryland Mission in the year
1733. He was in Newtown in 1742. I find his name
mentioned in that year in the Newtown Day Book. He
was professed of the four vows in 1743. He returned to
England, probably in 1747. According to Oliver he
died at Hooton in Cheshire, on the 18th day of July,
1753, at the age of fifty-seven. He was buried in the
Chancel of Eastham.

Father James Ashby, alias Middlehurst, was born in
Lancashire on the 18th of October, 17 14. He made his
noviceship at Watten, that favorite home of religious
fervor. Four years after his entrance into the Society,
he was probably a priest before becoming a Jesuit, we
find him on the Maryland Mission laboring with Fathers
Richard Molyneux, Bennet Neale, James Farrar, and
Thomas Poulton. During his missionary life in South-

I38 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

ern Maryland he was stationed in various places. At
one time we find him laboring zealously at St. Inigoes ;
again we find him at St. Thomas', and again at Newtown.
In the Catalogue for 1758 we find "James Ashby, late
of Newtown." Father Ashby spent several years at this
latter place, and to his labors the people there are in-
debted for the present Newtown Church. He also built
a house at St. Inigoes for the Fathers. This structure
was of solid brick and contained twelve rooms. It was
unfortunately burned down some years ago, and in its
destruction were lost many documents and books which
would help to throw much light upon St. Inigoes' his-
toric Residence.

Father Ashby died at Newtown on the 23d of Septem-
ber, 1767. He lies beside the church he had labored so
hard to build. His name, it is sad to say, is forgotten
in Britton's Neck, though he it was who gave that con-
gregation the church in which they have for many gen-
erations knelt to worship God. To Father George
Fenwick's notes I am indebted for the knowledge that
Father Ashby was the builder of the present church at
Newtown.

In the old Newtown Note-Book I find the name of
George Thorold. This was one of the most laborious of
all the missionaries of Southern Maryland. He toiled
faithfully and ardently in the Mission for the space of
forty-two years.

Father George Thorold was born of a wealthy family
in Berks, February 1 ith, 1670. Having reached his
twenty-first year he renounced the world, and all worldly
.advantages, and consecrated himself to religion by enter-
ing the Society of Jesus. Before coming to America he

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 39

had been chaplain at Michaelgate, Bar Convent, York.
The missioners of the Yorkshire District lived in per-
petual danger. "After London," it is said, "York was
more deeply dyed in the blood of English martyrs than
any city in England." From this we can deduce what
manner of life Father Thorold led while on the English
Mission. It was in York Castle that the martyred Fa-
ther Nicholas Postgate, while a prisoner, composed the
touching and beautiful verses beginning with the stanza :

" O gracious God, O Savious meek,
O Jesus, think of me,
And suffer me to kiss Thy feet,
Though late I come to Thee."

The hymn is still used in the wild moorlands of Ug-
thorpe. We wonder if Father Thorold did not teach it
to his people on the banks of St. Mary's River or down
by St. Clement's Bay? Towards the end of his long-
missionary life how appropriate this verse would be on
the lips of the venerable priest himself:

" My wearied wings, sweet Jesus, mark,
And when thou thinkest best,
Stretch forth Thy hand out of the ark,
And take me to Thy rest."

We may reasonably suppose that there was scarcely
a congregation in Southern Maryland which did not
enjoy the care and zeal of Father Thorold. In 1725 he
was appointed Superior of the Mission. This position
he held for about nine years. He died, crowned with
labors and merits, on the 15th of November, 1742.

Father George was probably brother to Edmund or

I4O OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Epiphanius Thorold, alias Turner, who was distinguished
in the home missions, and who was for a time Superior
of the Mission of Market Rasen, in the College of St.
Hugh.

I find also the name of James Whitgreave in the old
Newtown Note-Book. Father James Whitgreave was
the son of Thomas Whitgreave, Esq., of Mosley, County
Stafford, and his wife Isabella, daughter of William
Turville, Esq., of Aston-Flamville. His father's second
wife was Isabella, daughter and co-heir of Sir Aston
Cokayne, Kt, of Pooley, County Warwick. On his
maternal side Father Whitgreave had several kinsmen
who were distinguished and hoi}* members of the
Society of Jesus.

Moseley, the birthplace of James Whitgreave, was a
hamlet near Wolverhampton. " The original abode of
the Whitgreave family was at Whitgreave near Stafford,
where in the time of Henry II. ' Clemens Filius Huberti
de Whitgreave ' gave to the Priory of St Thomas, on the
river Sow, eight acres of land in the territory of Whit-
greave. The family continued at Whitgreave till the
time of Henry IV., when William de Whitgreave who
had married Joan, granddaughter and heiress of David
de Malplas, was appointed bailiff of Stafford, to which
town he removed. Robert, one of the younger sons,
became an officer in the royal Exchequer, and Escheator
of the County of Stafford, and in the former capacity
accompanied Henry V. into France. He bought the
Manors of Burton and Bridgford, with other estates in
the county of Stafford, as also the manor of Longford in
Shropshire, and settled at Burton near Stafford. His
grandson, another Robert, in the time of Henry VIII.,

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I4I

received the manor of Bridgford for his portion as a
second son, and married Dorothy Noel of Hilcott, in the
county of Stafford. Their fourth son, Thomas, by his
marriage in the time of James I., with Alice, daughter
and co-heiress of Henry Pitt, a ' merchant of the Staple '
acquired the estate of Moseley, which passed to his only
son, Thomas. This gentleman became an officer in the
royal army during the Civil Wars, and had the honor of
sheltering in his house Charles II., after the battle of
Worcester. On the Restoration he received a pension
from the King, and was appointed gentleman Usher to
the Queen, Catharine of Braganza. His only surviving
son, Thomas, married Isabel Turville, and had besides
other children, Thomas and James, who became priests
of the Society of Jesus. The present Henry Whit-
greave, Esq., of Moseley, his brothers and sisters are the
great, great, great-grandchildren of Thomas Whitgreave
above mentioned, who saved the life of his Sovereign.
The old house at Moseley (built in the time of Elizabeth)
in which Charles was sheltered, and the priest's hiding-
place there in which he took refuge, when his life was
endangered by a threatened search from the Puritans,
still exist.

" The mission at Moseley was served by the Fathers
of the Society till its suppression, and to them the family
is indebted for the consolations of religion during the
darkest days of persecution in England."

The story of how the grandfather of Father Whit-
greave saved the life of King Charles is very romantic.
As it will help to throw some light upon the early home
of our missionary in old England we shall give it in as
few words as possible : After the defeat of the royal army

I42 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

at Worcester, the King was obliged to fly for his life to
the woods and fields. Searches were made for him by
the Puritans on all sides. For a time the royal fugitive,
with his hair cut short, and wearing " an old green
woodriff's coat, and a white steeple crown hat," labored
in the woods with a peasant, and concealed himself at
night in a tree, which was long afterwards known as the
Royal Oak. The friends of his Majesty soon sought out
for him a more suitable dwelling-place. This was the
house of Thomas Whitgreave upon whose loyalty and
fidelity the King could fully depend. Charles rode up
to Whitgreave's on a mill horse. He was received
respectfully by that gentleman and Mr. Hudleston, " a
priest of the Holy Order of St. Bennet," who resided at
Moseley House.

" For the better security of his Majesty's retreat, Mr.
Whitgreave sent all his servants betimes in the morning,
each to their several employments abroad, except one
cook maid, a Catholic, who dressed their diet ; and it was
farther pretended Mr. Hudleston had a cavalier friend or
relation, newly escaped from Worcester, who lay pri-
vately in his chamber unwilling to be seen. So that this
grand secret was imparted to none in the house but Mr.
Whitgreave's mother, whom my Lord Wilmot presented
to the King, and whom his Majesty graciously saluted
and confided in. At that time Mr. Hudleston had with
him at Mosely under his tuition, young Sir John
Preston, and two other youths, Mr. Thomas Palin and
Mr. Francis Reynolds, nephews to Mr. Whitgreave.
These he placed at several windows in the garrets from
whence they had a prospect of all the passages from all
parts to the house, with strict charge given them to

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 143

bring timely notice of any, whether soldiers or others
that came near the house, and herein the boys were as
exact and vigilant as any sentinel could be on his
guard." While the king was engaged in eating, which
he did in the Priest's Room, he was waited on by Mr.
Hudleston and Mr. Whitgreave, while " old Mistress
Whitgreave was called in and commanded to sit down
and carve," for her royal guest.

Mistress Whitgreave seems to have been a lady of
great benevolence. Many of the poor soldiers who were
maimed and wounded at Worcester sought relief at her
door, and these she took into her house, and with great
tenderness and charity washed and dressed their bleeding
scars. During the King's concealment " he was pleased"
to inquire how Roman Catholics lived under the present
usurped Government; Mr. Hudleston told him they were
persecuted on account of their religion and loyalty, yet
his Majesty should see they did not neglect the duties
of their Church ; hereupon he carried him upstairs, and
showed him the Chapel, little, but neat and decent. The
King, looking respectfully upon the altar, and regarding
the crucifix, and silver candlesticks upon it, said : ' He
had an altar, crucifix, and silver candlesticks of his own,
till my Lord of Holland broke them, which (added the
King) he hath now paid for."

One afternoon a party of the rebels unexpectedly came
to search Moseley for Mr. Whitgreave ; their approach
was timely discovered and a servant came running up
stairs towards the chamber where the King lay, and
cried out — " Soldiers, soldiers are coming !" Upon this
the King was immediately conveyed by Mr. Whitgreave
into the private place or receptacle before mentioned,

1. 14 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

which always stood open and ready in case of contin-
gencies for his Majesty's retreat. And Mr. Whitgreave,
to prevent further search, and thereby secure the King
from hazard of discovery, generously went down and
exposed himself to the sight and fury of the soldiers,
who violently seized upon him and would have hurried
him to prison as a person engaged for the King in Wor-
cester fight, but he assured them that he had been a long
time sick and infirm at home, and called in the neighbors
to attest the same ; wherefore, after much dispute, they
at length let him go and departed. When they had
quitted the town, and not before, Mr. Whitgreave re-
turned, and with Mr. Hudleston, helped the King out of
his confinement, and attended him in his chamber. Mr.
Hudleston knew the King was acquainted with his char-
acter and function, and consequently also of his being
obnoxious to the sanguinary laws, and therefore said :
" Your Majesty is in some sort in the same condition
with me now, liable to dangers and perils, but I hope
God, that brought you hither, will preserve you here,
and that you will be safe in this place as in any castle of
your dominions." The King addressing himself both to
Mr. Whitgreave and Mr. Hudleston, replied : " If it please
God I come to my crown, both you and all of your per-
suasion shall have as much liberty as any of my sub-
jects."

How badly King Charles kept his promise is well
known to all who are acquainted with English history.

Father James Whitgreave was born March the 14th,
1698. His humanities were made at St. Omer's, and his
novitiate, which he began in his seventeenth year, at the
Jesuit House at Watten. He came to Maryland in his

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 45

twenty-sixth year, and labored strenuously in that Mis-
sion for the space of fourteen years. A part of this time
he spent at Bohemia Manor. In 1738 he returned to
England and became a missioner in the College of St.
Chad (his native County of Stafford), being declared its
Rector in 1743. The ancient town of Wolverhampton,
it is stated, was the headquarters of St. Chad's College
or District. In the year 996 a monastery was founded
there by Wulfrana, sister of King Edgar, and widow of
Aldhelm, Duke of Northampton, in honor of whom this
town, previously called Hampton, received the appelation
of Wulfranis-Hampton, of which its present name is a
corruption. The monastery continued until the year
1200, when it was surrendered to Hubert, Archbishop of
Canterbury, and was subsequently annexed by Edward
IV. to the Deanery of Windsor. On the revival of reli-
gion on the accession of James II., the English Jesuits
had a flourishing College, and a large residence and
chapel at this town. In fact, Wolverhampton was called
the Little Rome on account of the great number of Cath-
olics there. It was also the seat of the long-lived labors
of Father William Atkins, who died a martyr for the
Faith in Stafford gaol, 17th of March, 1681, at the age
of eighty years, being under sentence of death; and
Wolverhampton also had for its missioner for some years
the blessed Martyr, Father John Gavin, who suffered at
Tyburn.

Father James Whitgreave, after having passed
through many dangers and hardships, both in Maryland
and in England, passed to a better life at Moseley, on
the 26th day of July, 1750. As already intimated, he
had a brother in the .Society. This Father labored un-

I46 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

ceasingly in the Missions of Salden, of Oxford, and of
St. Chad.

Father Joseph Hattersty was born in London on the
15th of October, 1735. He was the son of Joseph
Hattersty and Elizabeth Grogan, both fervent Catholics.
He entered the English College at Rome as an alumnus
in 1749. Four years later on, in company with Father
Anthony Lowe, who was afterwards imprisoned by the
Revolutionists who had taken Dunkirk, he was admitted
to the Society. " After his ordination," says Oliver,
" he offered himself with a good and willing mind, and
generous heart, for the American Mission." He arrived
in Maryland July 12th, 1762. He was working on the
Newtown Mission during the years 1768 and 1769. On
May the 8th, 177 1, he died at Philadelphia, at the early
age of thirty-five. The Catalogue, after mentioning his
death, adds that he was " a most holy and zealous mis-
sioned"

Father Hattersty was one of those zealous Jesuit mis-
sionaries who were accustomed to go from St. Joseph's,
Philadelphia, into the Southern part of New Jersey. He
paid visits to the scattered Catholics of Gloucester and
Salem Counties, and no doubt did much good wherever
he went.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 47

CHAPTER IX.

Father Vincent Phillips was for some time at New-
town. I find his name in a few places in the old Note-
Book of that house. He was a native of Worcestershire
and was born on the 23d of September, 1698. His
novkeship was made at Watten. This he began in his
nineteenth year. After his ordination he was sent from
the Continent back to England and served the Missions
in the London and Suffolk Districts. Probably no
district of the English Province of the Society suffered
so severely as the College of St. Ignatius, or the London
District. It contained within its limits the very seat of
the persecuting government, with its judicial courts and
State prisons, which at one period formed the principal
residences of the Fathers, while Tvburn was witness
of the deaths of seventeen and St. Paul's Churchyard of
one of its martyrs for the Faith, to say nothing of the
numbers who died within its prison-walls, noble con-
fessors in the same cause. So bitter was the hatred the
Puritans bore everything loved and cherished by Cath-
olics that they even tore down the old Signs of Redemp-
tion that had been raised in the public ways of London
during the days of living faith. From an old absurd
paper we learn that the Golden Cross in Cheapside was
torn down in 1642, and with infamous irreverence
carried in funeral procession. More than ordinary

I48 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

courage was needed by the missionaries who served in
the London District, and this no doubt Father Phillips
possessed. While in the Suffolk District this Father
was Chaplain at Gifford's Hall, once the seat of the
religious Mannock family. This mission was not with-
out its dangers, and a very amusing story is told of an
Anglican clergyman there who was once mistaken for a
Jesuit and nearly stoned to death by an excited mob.

Oliver says that Father Phillips was professed while
serving the Maryland Mission, in 1735. About nineteen
years afterwards he returned to England and became a
missioner in the Oxford District.

Father Phillips died at the home prepared for " veter-
ans," at Ghent, in 1760.

Father James Walton was one of the missionaries of
Newtown. He is marked in the old catalogues as being
in that residence in 1778 and 1780. Father Walton was
an humble man, and most zealous in working for the
salvation of his neighbor. He seemed to have nothing
so much at heart as the advancement in perfection of his
spiritual children. Archbishop Carroll, in one of his
letters, says that Father Walton was indefatigable in his
labors in behalf of those committed to his care. The
journey of Father Walton from St. Mary's County to
Frederick, where he began to " live alone " on the 27th
of June, 1768, must have been indeed a trying one.*

* Father John Williams, a native of Flintshire, Wales, had been
at Frederick before the year 1768. On Father Walton's arrival in
that town, Father Williams returned to England, where he died,
in Monmouthshire, in 1793, or as some say in 1801. Father James
Pellentz, who spent ten years at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was at
Frederick for eighteen months.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. I49

Mounted on his horse, and in disguise, he had to ride
through many a hamlet hostile to Catholics, and espe-
cially to Jesuits. To a kind Providence alone he had to
trust for food and for shelter, when night came down
upon his way. He passed upon his dangerous route
many a one who was ready to imbrue his hands in the
blood of every Papist priest in the land. But, thanks to
God, the holy missionary arrived safely at his place of
destination, there to work without tiring for the glory of
his Creator and Redeemer.

Father Walton was engaged in missionary work at St.
Inigoes for some time. He was the successor of Father
Ignatius Matthews in that residence. He sank from his
labors at this last-named place in 1803. His loss was
severely felt in the Mission.*

In one of the books of the Newtown Library I find
the name of John Boone. This Father belonged to a
fine old Catholic family in Maryland which gave many
of its members to the service of the Church. Father
John had a cousin and a brother who were members of
the Society of Jesus. Father Joseph, his cousin, was the
son of Henry Boone and Miss Spalding, his wife, of
Charles County, Maryland. Joseph accompanied his
half-sister, Rachel, to France, and went himself to St.
Omer's College, and was there educated, ordained, and
finally died. Father Edward Boone, Father John's bro-
ther, labored zealously on the English Mission, and died

* Bishop Leonard Neale announced Father Walton's death in a
letter to Father Marmaduke Stone, Superior in England. In this
letter the Bishop says : " The Rev. Mr. Walton is gone to a better
life to receive the reward of his faithful and laborious exertions.
His loss is severely felt."

150 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

happily at Danby, Yorkshire. Nor were the Boone
family wanting in patriotism. One of them, John, was a
Lieutenant in the Maryland Line during the Revolution-
ary War. Another of the Boones was elected High
Sheriff of Maryland. Father John Boone, being ordained,
was sent on the Maryland Mission in 1765. About five
years later he returned to England and there labored
with much fruit for fourteen years. In 1784 he again
returned to his beloved Mission. At the meeting of the
" Select Body of the Catholic Clergy," held at White
Marsh in 1794, he was present. About one year after-
wards he yielded up his faithful soul into the hands of
his Creator.

It would have been difficult for the English Province
to supply its Mission with priests during the Penal Days
if God had not called many young Americans, chiefly
Marylanders, to work in His vineyard on this side of the
Atlantic. The priest of whom we are just going to
speak, like the Boarmans, the Sewalls, and the Fenwicks,
was a native of Maryland. Ignatius Matthews, being
already ordained priest, entered the Society at Watten
on the 7th of September, 1763. After his noviceship,
and some studies, he was sent, in 1766, to the Maryland
Mission. He was at St. Inigoes 29th March, 1784. He
died at Newtown, May the 1 ith, 1790, at the age of sixty.
I have been informed that there is a fair picture of this
Father in a private residence at Washington. It is in
India ink, and is the work of Ethelbert Cecil, a young
artist, whose great talent was lost for want of encourage-
ment and proper cultivation. The artist represents Fa-
ther Matthews as a venerable, yet hale man. He is in

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 151

the act of delivering a sermon to his congregation in the
Newtown Church.

Father Ralph Falkner was a native of Maryland. It
is likely that he made his humanities at the school
opened by the Jesuits at Bohemia in 1745 or 1746. It
may be well to remark here that it was in this school
that Archbishop Carroll made a part of his studies. It
is also probable that his cousin, Charles Carroll, of Car-
rollton, also studied here for some time.

Father Falkner was raised to the sublime dignity of
the priesthood on the 7th day of March, 1761. One
month after his ordination he set sail for Maryland. I
fear that nearly everything relating to his missionary
career has been lost. Ralph Falkner, written upon an
old book at Newtown, is the only trace I find of him in
the Mission.

The Neales, of Maryland, gave to that State some of
its most distinguished sons. Captain James Neale, the
worthy ancestor of that pious and well-known family,
came to the Colony before the year 1642. In that year
he had his " Plantation " near the mouth of the Wicomico
surveyed for his settlement. He was soon appointed the
Privy Councillor of Maryland, and is said to have been
a great favorite of the Crown. One of his daughters was
named after the wife of Charles I., " Henrietta Mariah."
Among his descendants were many who consecrated
their lives to the service of the Church, both as priests
and nuns. Right Rev. Leonard Neale, the second Arch-
bishop of Baltimore, was of his line. Even at this pres-
ent moment one of the Missionary Fathers at St. Inigoes
bears his name and inherits his blood.

Among those who are at rest in the quiet Newtown

152 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Churchyard is another of the Neales, Father Benedict.
This worthy Father was born in Maryland on the 3d of
August, 1709. After having pursued his studies on the
European Continent, he resolved to devote his life to the
labors of an apostolic life. And so, in his nineteenth
year, he entered the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus.
Not long after his ordination he was sent on the Mary-
land Mission. This venerable priest must have labored
in Southern Maryland for a period of no less than half a
century. During that long time how much merits he
must have amassed for Heaven. He died amidst his
labors on the 20th of March, 1787.

Father John Boarman,* who had two brothers, Charles
and Sylvester, in the Society, was born in Charles
County, Maryland. The date of his birth was January
27th, 1743. He joined the Order on the 7th of Septem-
ber, 1762. He pursued his philosophical and theological
studies at Li6ge. On the Suppression of the Jesuit
House in that city, he returned to his native State.
Though he left Liege on the 22d of November, 1773, he
did not arrive in the Mission before the 24th of March in
the following year. Father Boarman was at Port To-
bacco in 1783. He was present at the meeting convened
at Newtown, September 23d, 1783. He also attended

* During the cruel sway of the Parliament Commissioners,
Thomas Matthews, John Dandy, and William Bore/nan acknowl-
edged the Pope's supremacy in open court. The Boarmans have
clung lovingly to the Faith which William Boreman confessed at
the peril of loss of property, and even of life. Some of their num-
ber have borne the rich boon of Catholic Truth to homes in the
far West, and one of them is a member of the Society, in the Mis-
souri Province.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 53

the meeting convened at St. Thomas' Manor in J 793, and
that held at White Marsh in 1794. Father Boarman
was, according to the best authorities, a pious, zealous,
and devoted priest. His labors were incessant and most
fruitful. During twenty years he prayed and toiled for
the people committed to his paternal care. God was
pleased to call this saintly priest to Himself in 1794, in
the fifty-first year of his age. He died at Newtown, and
was there interred amidst the prayers and tears of his
sorrowing congregation.

No name is more familiar to the student who examines
the books of the Newtown Library than that of Augus-
tine Jenkins. His name is found written in the pages of
several Latin, French, and English works. Augustine
Jenkins was a native of Maryland, and was born January
the 1 2th, 1742. His ancestors, who were natives of
Wales, fled from persecution to Maryland, and as early
as 1660 established themselves at the head of the St.
Mary's River. His father was a gentleman highly es-
teemed in Southern Maryland ; his mother was the
daughter of Captain Thomas Courtenay. He had sev-
eral brothers who left St. Mary's County on account of
the persecutions they had to suffer at the hands of the
enemies of the Catholic Faith. The members of the
Jenkins family always proved themselves devoted chil-
dren of the Church. " They flourished under the pater-
nal government of the Calverts, and suffered persecution
under the Protestant Ascendancy, but neither prosperity,
the hope of reward, nor pains and penalties, ever caused
them to swerve from that which they cherished above all
things, the faith for which they had forsaken their parent
land."

154 <~> LD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

The Jenkins family took a patriotic part in the Revo-
lutionary War. In 1812, no less than five of Father
Jenkins' nephews did battle for their country against the
foreign foe.

White Plains, which originally belonged to the Jenkins
family was described to me by one who saw it many
years ago as being a charming place. Rows of tall pop-
lars guarded the avenue leading up to the venerable
residence. A rich green lawn lay spread before it.
Pebbled walks, fringed with snow-white shells, over
which drooped fragrant and delicate flowers, wound
around it in graceful curves. Everything within the
mansion, as well as its surroundings, bespoke the elegant
and refined taste of its inmates. The influence of early
associations will generally last through life. It is almost
impossible for one whose childhood and early boyhood
were passed in the midst of elegance and refinement to
grow rude or unpolished in manners and behavior.
This is the reason why the missioners of Maryland,
whether in the hovels of the poor white settlers, or in
the wigwams of the Indians, could always be distin-
guished as gentlemen by birth and education. The
effect of his first education at White Plains was always
seen in the conduct and bearing of Augustine Jenkins.
He was sweet, affable, and gentlemanly in all his ways.
He felt perfectly at his ease as well in the cottage as in
the manor. The charm of his manners was universally
felt. He had a winning grace about him that won the
affection of all who came in contact with him. His gen-
erous heart, which was a well of goodness, overflowed
with kindly feeling. It is, indeed, no wonder then, when

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 55

we also take into account his zeal and solid virtue, that
he proved most successful as a missionary.

Young Jenkins, while still a gay-hearted boy, had
to endure the pangs of a wide separation from his home
and friends. It was resolved that the pious, gentle youth
should proceed to the Old Catholic Continent to prose-
cute his studies. We can fancy that we see him bidding-
farewell to his little playmates and brothers ; we can
imagine that we behold him kneeling humbly to receive
his cherished parents' blessing. He arises, embraces all,
and drives down to meet the boat that awaits him ; but
before he is out of sight of his loved home he looks back
upon the scenes of his childhood with a fond and linger-
ing gaze.

After having spent some years in Europe, young Jen-
kins resolved to enter the Society of Jesus, which he did
on the 7th of September, 1766. After his noviceship he
continued his studies at Li6ge.

The first English Novitiate of the Society of Jesus was
commenced at St. John's, Louvain, in 1607. In 1614 it
received students in Philosophy and Divinity, as well as
novices ; a separate house in the garden being fitted up
for the latter. At the end of the same year, however,
the Novitiate was removed to Li6ge. The ground occu-
pied by the house, garden, etc., was purchased in 16 14
or 161 5 by Father John Gerard, and the house was built
with money furnished by English Catholics. A few
years later, Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, assigned an
annual pension for the maintenance of the College, and
thus became its founder, though the premises were Eng-
lish property; Towards the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury the farm at Chevremont was purchased and given

I56 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

to the College for a country or villa-house by Lord Cas-
tleman. Liege continued to be the theologate of the
English Province until the year of the Suppression of
the Society, 1773.

Father Jenkins was that year at Liege engaged in
studying his fourth year of theology. His Professor of
Sacred Scripture was Father Thomas Barrow, " a prodigy
of learning ;" a man of almost universal genius. Our
young missionary studied the controverted points of reli-
gion under the learned and holy Father Anthony Brun-
ing, a distinguished theologian of his time. Of Jenkins'
Theological Professor, Rev. Thomas Ellerker, Oliver
says : " he was a worthy scholar of such a master as
Father John Thorpe. At the end of Rhetoric, in 1755,
this promising young man entered the Novitiate, and in
the sequel became one of the ablest professors of theol-
ogy that the English Province ever produced. His
treatise De Incamatione may be regarded as a master-
piece.

' From his cradle
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one ;
And to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing
Heaven.' "

Among those who served in the Maryland Mission
who had the good fortune to be students with Father
Jenkins under such able professors, were : Fathers
Charles Sewall, John Boarman, John Boone, and Leon-
ard Neale.

After his studies and ordination Father Jenkins re-
turned to Maryland. He arrived on the 24th day of

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 57

May, 1774. A few years later on we find him engaged
at Newtown. His apostolic work had the special bless-
ing of Heaven on it. He made many converts, reclaimed
hardened sinners, and led pious souls to a higher degree
of sanctity. His confessional was always surrounded
by penitents, and the people flocked around him to re-
ceive Holy Communion from his hands. He was, as
Archbishop Carroll truly said, " a man without guile,"
the loved and tender father of his flock.

The Rev. Father Jenkins, after many labors and pains,
died a happy death at Newtown on the 2d of February,
in the year of our Lord 1800.

Bishop Carroll writes in April, 1780: "With Father
Walton, at Newtown, lives, among others, that man
without guile, Father Jenkins. I am told he is
almost adored by his acquaintance ; and I dare say, very
deservedly."

$8 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

CHAPTER X.

John Lucas was born on the 5th of May, 1740, Twen-
ty-three years afterwards he entered the Society. Soon
after his elevation to the priesthood he was sent on the
Maryland Mission. That was in 1770. He died in
Maryland in 1795.

It was about the time that Father Lucas labored in
the Mission that one "of the Fathers died heroically in
the performance of one of his priestly functions.* The
Father, some say it was Lucas himself, being summoned
on a sick-call in the depth of a dark and raw night, was
overtaken by a heavy snow-storm. For some time he
struggled on bravely towards the house of the sick man.
At length, being overcome by the cold and fatigue,
he fell prostrate on the ground. Some farmers passing
early the next morning to their work found him dead in
the snow. As we write, the words of the poet Longfel-
low come naturally to our mind:

" There, in the twilight cold and grey,
Lifeless, but beautiful he lay,
And from the sky serene and far
A voice fell like a falling star, Excelsior."

This may be the place to insert an anecdote which we
have on very good authority. One evening a Protestant

* Related by Rev. James Fitton who died in Boston a few years
ago.

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 59

gentleman rode past the Newtown Manor on his way to
Long Point. The hour was calm and beautiful. The
sun was sinking behind the groves of Bedlam Neck. A
flood of glory lit the waters of St. Clement's Bay. The
traveller rode on leisurely, little dreaming that the heav-
ens would soon be rent by forked lightning. Yet such
was the case. On his return home a terrific storm swept
over Bedlam Neck. The rain fell in torrents, the sky
grew pitchy black, the winds lashed the tranquil waters
to fury. In his fright, the wayfarer sought an asylum in
the hospitable old Manor. The Fathers received him
very kindly and remained with him for hours at the par-
lor fire. About midnight the bells of the house were
rung with violence. In a moment one of the attendants
rushed into the room and announced an urgent sick-call.
Without a moment's hesitation one of the Fathers arose
and begged the guest to excuse him, as he had to attend
to a sick-call. The gentleman was surprised and urged
the Father to wait until the storm had abated. The Fa-
ther smiled graciously and said : " My dear sir, it is im-
possible for me to remain. At all hazards I must attend
the sick." Soon the sound of a horse's hoof could be
heard on the road leading from the Newtown Manor.
The Father was on his way to visit the dying. The
Protestant gentleman was so touched by the devoted
charity of the priest that he exclaimed : " The religion
that produces such heroic self-sacrifice must be divine."
He prolonged his stay at the Manor, received instruction,
and became a good and fervent Catholic.

Joseph Doyne was born in Maryland, November I ith,
1734. He entered the Society on the 7th of September,
1758. He served the Mission at Stonyhurst for eleven

l6o OLD CATHOLN MARYLAND AND

years. Having been sent on the Maryland Mission, he
labored in different parts of the lower counties. He was
for a long time at St. Thomas' Manor in Charles County.
He is mentioned many times in the letters of Bishop
Carroll. I find his name in several of the books of the
Newtown Library. He was a member of the Select
Body of the Catholic Clergy. He took part in the meet-
ing convened at St. Thomas' Manor in 1793. He was
also present at the meeting held at White Marsh in 1794.
He was one of those Fathers who wished to join " the
Institute of the Faith of Jesus." He died at St. Thomas'
Manor, 1803.

The name of Robert Molyneux is closely connected
with the history of the Newtown Mission. This learned
scholar and eloquent preacher was born at or near
Formby, County Lancaster, July 24th, 17^8. He was
descended from a high and distinguished family. The
pictures hanging on the walls of his ancestral chambers
were well calculated to inspire him with generous and
noble sentiments. On September 7th, 1757, he entered
the Society. He had the happiness of seeing one of his
brothers, William, a member of the Order. In 1764
Father Robert was a Master at Bruges College. Soon
after his ordination he was sent on the Maryland Mis-
sion. So highly did Archbishop Carroll esteem him
that he was anxious to make him his Coadjutor Bishop,
but he could not be persuaded to accept the post. In
1786 and 1787 we find him distinguishing himself in
Philadelphia as a good and zealous priest, and as a re-
markably eloquent speaker. In 1789 we find him em-
ployed in missionary work at Bohemia. He spent the

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. l6l

year 1796 at Georgetown, and 1797 and 1798 at New-
town. In 1805 he is said to be in St. Mary's County.
At the meeting held at Georgetown in 1805, it was re-
solved that Robert Molyneux and Charles Sewall should
take care of the business affairs of Cedar Point Neck.
On the Restoration of the Society in this country, he
was appointed the first Superior of the Mission. While
Superior he won the confidence and affection of his sub-
jects by his kind and affable manner. Father Molyneux
was no ordinary man. On account of his learning, zeal,
and solid virtue, he may well be considered one of the
chief glories of the Society of Jesus in this country.
He died at Georgetown in 1808, universally regretted by
the clergy and laity.

Father John Bolton was born October 22d, 1742. He
entered the Novitiate at Watten on the 7th of September,
1 761. Soon after his ordination in 1 771, he was sent on
the Maryland Mission. In 1780 he was zealously em-
ployed in Charles County. He was sent by his Superior
to the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1787. I find an
entry for that year in Father Mosley's " Ordo " as fol-
lows : " 9th September, I, Jno. Bolton buried for y e first
time at St. Joseph's, Talbot." At the meeting held at
St. Thomas' Manor on the 4th of October, 1793, Father
Bolton was present. He was also at the meeting held
at White Marsh on the 25th of February, 1794. There
are two shelves full of venerable breviaries in the present
Leonardtown Library. At the top of the title-page of
one of these books, which was printed in 1759, I find
" Joan. Bolton." • Father Bolton's labors on the Eastern
Shore were most fruitful. He not only confirmed the

l62 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

Catholics he found there on his arrival, but led a great
many wanderers into the true fold. In Mosley's "Ordo"
I find: "ab anno Dni 1787, J. Bolton, R. Jos. Mosley's
successor." Then follows a long list of converts made
by him in various places along the Eastern Shore of
Maryland and in Delaware. Among his converts were
many Quakers. That he devoted himself, like another
Peter Claver, to those of African descent is proved by
the vast number of colored persons whom he received
into the Church. Father Bolton died at the Newtown
Manor in the autumn of 1809.

Bishop Carroll thus announces the death of Father
Bolton, in a letter to Father Charles Plowden : u I am
sorry to inform you that another of my, and indeed your,
contemporaries, tho' some years older, has dropped off.
Our honest and worthy Brother, the Rev. Mr. John
Bolton, departed this life on the 9th of this month, in a
most religious and placid manner. With moderate abil-
ities, but an excellent will to fulfil the duties of his call-
ing, he consecrated his days to them, always with punc-
tuality and cheerfulness, winning the affections of his
congregation wherever he lived, and never making an
enemy. His sickness did not last more than a week ; it
was contracted in the service of his neighbor, whom he
visited and watched over till near midnight, and, in order
to be in time at his chapel the next day (Sunday), left
him with a profuse perspiration to expose himself to a
noxious dew, which brought on the fever that terminated
his existence, after receiving most calmly and piously
all the rights of the Church. Let our Brethren know of
his death."

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 63

Father Peter Morris, after having labored zealously
during thirteen years, died suddenly at Newtown of apo-
plexy. He was born on the 8th of March, 1743, and
entered the Society on September the 7th, in the year
1760. He came to Maryland in 1770.

Arnold Livers enriched the Newtown Library with
several of his books. This Father was born in Mary-
land on the nth of May, 1705. He entered the Society
at Watten, September the 7th, 1724. On the 2d of Feb-
ruary, 1742, he was professed of the four vows. After
having finished his studies he came back to Maryland
and died here August 16th, 1777, aged seventy-two.

Father Francis Xavier Neale was born in Charles
County, Md., June 3d, 1756. He made his classical
studies, like his brothers, Leonard and Charles, at St.
Omer's ; afterwards he went to the "Academy " at Liege
which during the Suppression continued for a time the
good work of the English Scholasticate. Having been
ordained, he left Liege, April 3d, 1788, and returned to
America and served on the old Missions of the Society
in Maryland. When permission was obtained by Arch-
bishop Carroll to establish a novitiate, one of the first to
enter the Society, on the Feast of St. Francis Borgia,
October the 10th, 1806, was Father Francis Neale, and
at the same time he was made Master of Novices, having
under him Brother, afterwards Father John McElroy.
There is in the Alexandria Residence a fine portrait in
oil of Father Neale. He died at St. Thomas' Manor,
December 20th, 1837.

Father Sylvester Boarman was a native of Maryland,
and the brother of John and Charles, both Jesuits. He

164 OLD CATHOLIC MARYLAND AND

was born November 7th, 1746, and entered the Society
September 7th, 1765. At the time of the Suppression
he was studying philosophy at Li6ge; and, before return-
ing to Maryland, was ordained and became a very
zealous missioner. From old records I learn that he
returned to his native State on the 24th of March, 1784.
He was stationed at Newtown in 1800. He was at St.
Inigoes in 1805. He died at Newport, Charles County,
in 1811.

Father Ignatius Baker Brooke was a native of Mary-
land, and probably the nephew of a Father of the same
name who died at St. Omer's College, in 175 1 . He was
born on the 21st of April, in the very year in which his
uncle died. He entered the Society on September the
7th, 1770. At the time of the Supression, 1773, he was
at Ghent. He was at Newtown in 1802. When Father
Robert Molyneux left that Mission for Georgetown, in
1805, Father Brooke became his successor. He re-
mained as Superior at Newtown until 181 1.

Father Brooke lived long enough to see a second
Archbishop ruling in Maryland. What joy it must have
given the venerable priest's heart to see the progress the
Church had made in his native State before his eyes
closed in death. He had known days of darkness and
persecution for the Faith that he loved. But now, before
he sinks to rest, he sees it in all the beauty of its rise.
What transports would he not feel if he could behold it
now in the mid-day of of its majesty and glory ! What
consolation would not fill his heart if he saw the
Churches, and Colleges, the Orphanages and Asylums

ITS EARLY JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 1 65

that now cheer and bless the land. Even a hundred
years ago, 1789, when the great and good Archbishop
Carroll was consecrated Bishop of Baltimore, none
could dream of the marvelous, and almost miraculous
splendor of the Church in Maryland in this year of our
Lord, 1889.

DEO GRATIAS!

APPENDIX.

CATALOGU E

OF

EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.
1 634-1805.

I prepared this Catalogue some years ago, and published
it in the Woodstock Letters. I trust it may prove of
some service to Catholic historical students.

W. P. Treacy.

1634 — Andrew White ; John Altham, alias Gravenor ; Timothy
Hayes ? alias Hanmer ; Residence, St. Mary's City, Md.

1635— The same. All at St. Mary's City.

1636 — Thomas Copley, alias Philip Fisher, Superior ; Andrew
White ; John Rogers ? alias Bamfield ; John Wood ? Father
Hayes returned to England about this time. St. Mary's still
the principal Residence.

1637— Thomas Copley ; Andrew White ; John Altham. All prob-
ably residing at St. Mary's. Father Knowles died soon after
his arrival.

1638 — Ferdinand Poulton, aliases John Brock and Morgan, Supe-
rior ; Andrew White ; Thomas Copley. At St. Mary's City.
Fathers Rogers and Wood in England.

1639— Thomas Copley, St. Mary's City ; Ferdinand Poulton, with
the Proprietary, at Mattapany on the Patuxent ; John Altham,
on Kent Island ; Andrew White, in the palace of the king,
whom they call Tayac, at Piscataway.

167

1 68 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

1640— Thomas Copley, St. Mary's City ; Ferdinand Poulton, Mat-
tapany ; Father Altham died at St. Mary's City, November
5th of this year. During 1640 the missionaries made various
excursions among the Indian tribes. They baptized the Em-
peror and Empress of Piscataway, and visted the King of the
Anacostans.

1641— Thomas Copley, St. Mary's City ; Andrew White, at Pis-
cataway ; Roger Rigby, at a new settlement which in the vul-
gar idiom they call Patuxent. In this year the missionaries
opened a residence at Portobacco ; almost the whole town
" received the Faith with baptism." Father Poulton died.

1642 — The same as to missionaries and residences.

1643— Andrew White at Portobacco. The rest as in 1641.

1644— It is supposed that Father Copley, owing to the attacks of
Claiborne and Ingle, removed from St. Mary's City to St.
Inigoes. Father John Cooper arrives in Maryland.

1645 — Bernard Hartwell, Superior, at St. Inigoes ; Andrew White
and Thomas Copley ; probably residing at Portobacco. Both
these missionaries were this year taken prisoners by a party
from Virginia. They were put in irons, and taken back to
England. The other missionaries, Father John Cooper and
Fathers Hartwell and Rigby fled to Virginia.

1646— Bernard Hartwell, the only missionary in Maryland, died
this year, probably at St. Inigoes. Roger Rigby, who had
great influence among the Indians, and who was high in the
esteem of Leonard Calvert, died of hardship in Virginia. Fa-
ther John Cooper died in Virginia.

1647— This year the Catholics of Maryland mourned over the ab-
sence of their beloved and devoted missionaries.

1648— Father Copley returned boldly to Maryland. He was re-
received by his dear flock as " an Angel from God." One of
his companions, perhaps Father Laurence Starkey, remained
in Virginia.

1649 — Thomas Copley, Superior, at St. Inigoes ; Laurence Star-
key, alias Sankey. Father Starkey attended to the different
outlying missions, Newtown, Portobacco, etc.

1650— Thomas Copley, Superior ; Laurence Starkey.

1651 — The same.

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND 1 69

1652 — Laurence Starkey. This year Claiborne, and his Puritan
party, took possession of St. Mary's City and persecuted the
Catholics of Maryland.

1653 — Laurence Starkey alone in Maryland. Father Copley died.

1654 — Francis Fitzherbert, alias Darby ; Laurence Starkey. About
1654 Father Francis Rogers came to Maryland, but remained
only a short time in that Mission.

1655 — Francis Fitzherbert, at St. Inigoes ; Laurence Starkey at-
tending to the outlying missions. This year the Fathers were
again persecuted. They had to fly to Virginia for safety.
Their residences at St. Inigoes and Portobacco were sacked
by the Puritans. The missionaries suffered much in Virginia
where they lived in a low and mean hut not unlike a cave.

1656— The Fathers still forced to live in Virginia.

1057 — No missionaries in Maryland. Father Starkey died in the
midst of his trials in Virginia, on the 13th of February, 1657.

1658 — Jesuits again in Maryland. Francis Fitzherbert ; Thomas
Payton. This year Father Fitzherbert was arrested and tried
for teaching and preaching at Newtown and Chaptico. He
defended himself under the charter, and was acquitted.

1659 — Francis Fitzherbert. Father Payton returned to England
on business.

1660 — Francis Fitzherbert. Father Payton, returning to America,
died on the voyage, January 12th, 1660.

1661 — Francis Fitzherbert; Henry Warren, alias Pelham. This
year William Bretton, gent., gave a piece of land on Newtown
Hundred as the site of a new church, and for a graveyard.
The new church was at first dedicated to St. Ignatius, but
afterwards it was placed under the patronage of St. Francis
Xavier.

]0r,2 Henry Warren. Father Fitzherbert returned to Europe.

[663 This vear Father Warren obtained a conveyance of Church

lands from Cuthbert Fenwick to himself, " Copley's succes-
sor." Father Edward Tidder, alias Ingleby, in Maryland.

1664 Henry Warren ; Edward Tidder ; Peter Manners, vere Pel-
con. It is a mistake to suppose that Peter Maimers and
George Pole were identical.

I/O CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

1665 — Henry Warren; Edward Tidder ; Peter Manners. This
year Father Fitzwilliams, alias Villiers, died in Maryland.

1666 — Henry Warren ; Peter Manners ; George Pole ; Edward
Tidder.

1667 — Henry Warren ; Peter Manners; Edward Tidder; George
Pole.

1668 — Henry Warren ; George Pole ; Peter Manners. This year
Father Henry Warren purchased the Newtown estate from
Mr. William Bretton for 40,000 pounds of tobacco.

1669 — Henry Warren, alias Pelham ; William Warren, alias Pel-
ham. It is thought that these two missionaries were brothers.
Father Peter Manners died on the 24th of April, and Father
George Pole on the 31st of October.

1670 — Henry Warren ; William Warren.

1671 — Two missionaries in Maryland. Father William Warren
died on the 7th of February.

1672 — Two Fathers in Maryland.

1673 — Two Franciscans arrived. Great harmony existed between
them and the Jesuits.

1674 — Father Clavering ; Father Waldegrave, alias Pelham.

1675 — Francis Pennington ; Nicholas Gulick. Both these Fathers
came with the Royal Fleet from London.

1676 — Francis Pennington ; N. Gulick.

1677 — Thomas Gavan, Superior, with five companions — some
priests and some Coadjutor Brothers.

1678 — Michael Foster, Superior ; Francis Pennington ; Thomas
Gavan ; Nicholas Gulick.

1679 — Michael Foster, Superior ; Francis Pennington ; Thomas
Gavan.

1680— The same.

1681 — The same.

1682 — To those in 1679 is added Father Thomas Percy.

1683 — The same. Father Percy returns to England. A new
Mission was begun at New York with Thomas Harvey, alias
Barton, as Superior, and Henry Harrison, alias John Smith,
as assistant missionary.

1684 — Francis Pennington, Superior; Thomas Gavan; John Pen-
nington, at Newtown. Father Foster died on the 6th of Feb-

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. \J\

ruary. — New York : Thomas Harvey, Superior ; Henry Har-
rison,

1685 — Francis Pennington, Superior; Thomas Gavan returned to
England ; Father John Pennington died at Newtown on the
18th of October. — New York : Thomas Harvey ; Henry Har-
rison.

1686 — Francis Pennington, at Newtown Manor. — New York :
Thomas Harvey, Superior; Charles Gage; Henry Harrison.

1687 — Francis Pennington. — New York: Thomas Harvey ; Charles
Gage in England.

1688 — Francis Pennington. — New York : Thomas Harvey ; Henry
Harrison.

1689 — Francis Pennington. — New York : Fathers Harvey and
Harrison are driven out. Father Harrison, in trying to make
his escape to France, is taken by Dutch pirates. Father
Harvey walked to Maryland.

1690 — Francis Pennington ; John Matthews. Father Harrison is
in Ireland.

1691 — Francis Pennington ; John Matthews.

1692 — William Hunter, Superior, residing at St. Thomas' Manor;
Francis Pennington at Newtown Manor ; John Matthews.

1693 — Francis Pennington, Superior ; William Hunter ; John
Matthews.

1694 — Francis Pennington ; William Hunter. Father John Mat-
thews died at Newtown, December the 8th, 1694.

1695 — William Hunter, Superior; Francis Pennington. Father
Harrison, at Loretto.

1696 — William Hunter, Superior; John Hall; Robert Brooke.
Father Thomas Harvey died in Maryland, aged 84. He spent
65 years in the Society.

1697 — William Hunter, Superior; John Hall, Procurator; Robert
i Brooke ; Henry Harrison.

1698 — William Hunter, Superior ; Father James Gonent died on
the voyage to Maryland, December 28th, 1698.

1699 — William Hunter; Father Francis Pennington expired at the
house of Mr. Hill at Newtown, the 22d of February, 1699.
Rev. James Haddock, O. Min. Str. Obs.

1700 — William Hunter, Superior ; Robert Brooke ; George Tho-

172 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

rold ; William Wood, alias Guillick, or Kellick ; Thomas
Mansell. " Father Harrison is on his way; but nothing has
been heard of him," says the Maryland Catalogue.

1701 — William Hunter, Superior ; Robert Brooke ; Thomas Man-
sell ; George Thorold, and another Father. Father Harrison
died.

1702 — William Hunter, Superior; Robert Brooke; Thomas Man-
sell ; George Thorold. Father Matthew Brooke died at St.
Thomas' Manor ; Father Henry Warren died in England on
June 7th, 1702.

1703 — William Hunter, Superior; Robert Brooke; Thomas Man-
sell : George Thorold ; William Wood ; Richard Kirkham,
alias Latham ; Henry Cattaway. Father John Hall died this
year, July 9th, at Ghent.

1704 — William Hunter, Superior, at St. Thomas' Manor ; Robert
Brooke, at Newtown Manor; Thomas Mansell, at Bohemia
Manor ; William Wood ; Geo. Thorold ; Richard Kirkham ;
Henry Cattaway ; Thos. Havers.

1705 — William Hunter, Superior ; Brooke, etc., as the past year.

1706 — The same, except that Father Cattaway returned to Eng-
land. Father Mansell obtained the patent for St. Xavier's,
Bohemia.

1707 — William Hunter, Superior ; Robert Brooke; George Thor-
old ; William Wood ; Thomas Mansell.

1708— The same.

1709 — The same.

1710 — Robert Brooke, Superior.

1711 — Robert Brooke, Superior; Thomas Mansell; William
Hunter; George Thorold; William Wood; Thomas Hodg-
son ; Peter Atwood ; Richard Thomas, alias Webster ;
Charles Brockholes ; Francis Beaumont, alias or vere
Williams.

1712 — The same. Father Henry Poulton died this year at New-
town Manor, the 27th of September.

1713 — The same. Father Thomas Hodgson at Bohemia.

1714 — The same. Father Robert Brooke died at Newtown
Manor, 18th of July. Thomas Mansell, Superior.

1715 — Thomas Mansell, Superior; the rest the same.

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. 1 73

1716 — The same. It is said that Father Brockholes returned to
England this year.

1717 — The same.

1718 — The same. Father Francis Beaumont returned to England.

1719 — The same. Father William Gerard arrived.

1720 — The same. George Thorold at St. Thomas' Manor.
Father William Wood died in the month of August.

1721 — William Hunter at St. Thomas' Manor ; Joseph Greaton ;
Thomas Mansell ; George Thorold ; William Gerard ; Thomas
Hodgson ; Peter Atwood ; Richard Thomas. Father Man-
sell obtains the deed of Bohemia, Cecil Co., Md.

1722— William Hunter, at St. Thomas' Manor, Charles Co., Md.
The rest the same.

1723— George Thorold, St. Mary's Co., Md. Thomas Mansell;
John Bennet ; Peter Atwood ; Joseph Greaton ; Richard
Thomas. Father William Hunter died at Port Tobacco, 15th
August, 1723.

1724 — Thomas Hodgson, at Bohemia; George Thorold; Peter
Atwood ; Richard Thomas ; William Gerard ; John Bennet,
vere or alias Gosling, was living at Annapolis, at Mrs. Car-
roll's ; James Whitgreave came in December ; Francis
Floyd ; Henry Whetenhall ; Peter Davis ; James Case.
Father Thomas Mansell, alias Harding, died at St. Inigoes
August 18th.

1725 — George Thorold, Superior, at St. Thomas' Manor; the rest
the same.

1726 — George Thorold, Superior; the rest the same. Father
Hodgson died at Bohemia, December the 18th.

1727 — George Thorold, Superior ; Peter Atwood ; William Gerard ;
Jas. Whitgreave; Henry Whetenhall; Francis Floyd; John
Bennet; Peter Davis;. Richard Thomas; James Case;
Joseph Greaton.

1728 — Peter Atwood, Superior; John Bennet at Annapolis. The
rest as in the past year.

1729— George Thorold, Superior, at St. Thomas' Manor; Peter
Atwood, in Charles Co. ; Father Francis Floyd died at New-
town Manor, Nov, 13th. Father Bennet returned to England.

1730 — George Thorold, Superior; Peter Atwood.

174 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

1731 — George Thorold, Superior; Peter Atwood ; Father Wm.
Gerard died at St. Inigoes, the 16th of April. Father James
Case died in the same station, the 15th of February.

1732 — George Thorold, Superior; Peter Atwood in St. Mary's Co.,
Md. ; Henry Whetenhall ; Father Robert Harding arrived.

1733 — Peter Atwood, Superior, in St. Mary's Co., Md. George
Thorold ; Henry Whetenhall, in Ann Arundel Co., Md. ;
Robert Harding at St. Thomas' Manor ; Jas. Quin ; James
Whitgreave in Ann Arundel Co. ; Joseph Greaton at Philadel-
phia, Penn. ; Richard Molyneux ; Vincent Philips ; James
Farrar ; Arnold Livers. — Pennsylvania : St. Joseph's Church,
Philadelphia, built this year.

1734 — George Thorold was appointed Superior of the Maryland
Mission in March ; Henry Whitenhall ; James Quin ; James
Whitgreave in Ann Arundel Co'. ; Robert Harding ; Peter
Davis ; Richard Molyneux ; Thomas Gerard ; Arnold Livers
at St. Thomas' Manor ; Vincent Philips ; some say that
Father Thorold continued Superior urtfil June, and that he
was then succeeded by Father Atwood. Father Atwood died
on Christmas Day, 1734, at the Newtown Manor. Father
Thomas Leckonby, sen., died at Portobacco, Dec. 16th, 1734.
Father John Fleetwood died on the 5th of January, probably
at Newtown.

1735 — Vincent Philips ; George Thorold ; James Quin ; Father
Richard Thomas died the 16th of January.

1736 — Richard Molyneux, Superior ; George Thorold.

1737 — Richard Molyneux, Superior, at St. Thomas' Manor ; James
Quin in Ann Arundel Co. ; James Whitgreave ; Robert
Harding ; Thomas Gerard ; Vincent Philips ; Arnold Livers
at St. Thomas' Manor ; George Thorold, in Ann Arundel Co.,
Md. James Farrar in Ann Arundel Co. — Pennsylvania : Jos.
Greaton at St. Joseph's Church.

1738 — Richard Molyneux at St. Thomas' Manor ; George Thor-
old ; Jas. Whitgreave, St. Mary's Co. ; James Farrar; Thomas
Poulton came on the 4th or 28th of April. On this last day he
gave testimony to grants.

1739 — Richard Molyneux, at St. Thomas' Manor (old indenture) ;
Owen Joseph Kingsley, who spent some time on the Mary-

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. 1 75

land Mission, died at Watten, the 24th of January, agad 42. —
Pennsylvania: Jos. Greaton.

1740 — Richard Molyneux, at St. Thomas' Manor; Richard Arch-
bold ; Robert Harding; Arnold Livers, at Newtown. — Penn-
sylvania: Joseph Greaton.

1741 — Richard Molyneux; Thomas Poulton, in Charles Co.;
George Thorold ; John Digges ; James Quin, in " Queen Ann
County." — Pennsylvania: Joseph Greaton; Henry Neale ;
Theodore Schneider, at Goshenhoppen.

1742 — Thomas Poulton, at Bohemia Manor; Robert Harding;
Benedict Neale, at Newtown ; James Quin ; Jas. Farrar, at
Newtown ; Thos. Digges ; Arnold Livers, at Newtown ; Father
George Thorold died the 15th of November, at St. Thomas'
Manor. This venerable missionary had spent more than
forty years in Maryland. — Pennsylvania : Joseph Greaton ;
Henry Neale ; Father William Wappeler purchased seven
lots in Lancaster, Penn. ; Theodore Schneider.

1743 — Richard Molyneux, at St. Thomas' Manor; Bennet Neale;
James Farrar ; James Ashbey ; Thomas Poulton. — Pennsyl-
vania : Joseph Greaton ; Henry Neale ; William Wappeler ;
Theodore Schneider.

1741 — Richard Molyneux; Thomas Poulton; James Farrar;
James Ashbey ; Thomas Poulton ; Bennet Neale. — Pennsyl-
vania ; Joseph Greaton ; Henry Neale ; Theodore Schneider ;
William Wappeler. This Father was for a part of 1744, at
Newtown.

1745 — Richard Molyneux ; Thomas Poulton, at Bohemia ; Vin-
cent Philips ; Robert Harding ; James Farrar ; Arnold
Livers ; Thomas Digges ; Benedict Neale ; James Ashbey.
A school opened at Bohemia. Father James Whetenhall
died the 27th of May, in England. Father Quin was
accidentally killed in getting out of a ferry boat, which was
being dragged by his horse, on Choptank River, November
27th. — Pennsylvania: Joseph Greaton, Superior; Theodore
Schneider ; Henry Neale ; William Wappeler.

1746 — The same with Father James Le Motte, alias Lancaster.
Father Whitgreave in England. Thomas Poulton, at
Bohemia.

I76 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

1747 — George Hunter at St. Thomas' Manor; Thomas Poulton, at
Bohemia ; James Farrar ; Benedict Neale, at Deer Creek,
Baltimore Co., Md. — Pennsylvania: Joseph Greaton ; The-
odore Schneider ; Henry Neale ; William Wappeler.

1748 — Richard Molyneux ; Robert Harding, Prince George's Co.,
Md. ; Vincent Philips, in St. Mary's Co., Md. ; Thomas
Poulton, at Bohemia. John Kingdom, at Bohemia ; Father
John Digges died. — Pennsylvania : Father Henry Neale died
in Philadelphia. Father Wm. Wappeler returned to Europe.
Richard Molyneux, Superior ; he returns to England the next
year.

1740 — Geo. Hunter, in Charles Co., Md. ; Vincent Philips; John
Kingdom, at Bohemia ; Robert Harding ; Arnold Livers ;
Benedict Neale, at Deer Creek, Baltimore Co. ; Thomas
Digges ; James Ashbey, St. Mary's Co. ; James Carroll ;
Richard Ellis ; James Lancaster ; James Breadnall, at St.
Thomas' Manor. Father Thomas Poulton died at Newtown
Manor, Jan. 23d. — Pennsylvania : Joseph Greaton, Theodore
Schneider.

1750 — George Hunter, at Port Tobacco; John Kingdom, at New-
town ; Benedict Neale, at Deer Creek ; John Lewis, at
Bohemia; Arnold Livers, at Newton; Thomas Digges, in
Sequanock ; Robert Harding ; James Ashbey, at St. Inigoes ;
Theodore Schneider, in Penn. ; Jos. Greaton, at Bohemia.

1 7 •"> 1 — George Hunter; Benedict Neale; Joseph Greaton, at
Bohemia. Father John Bennet, alias Gasling, died the 13th
of April, in England. — Pennsylvania : Robert Harding ;
Theodore Schneider.

1752 — George Hunter; Father Hunter made his Retreat at St.
Inigoes ; Jos. Greaton. — Pennsylvania : Robert Harding ;
Theodore Schneider, at Goshenhoppen.

1753 — George Hunter; John Lewis, at Bohemia ; Benedict Neale,
at Deer Creek, Baltimore Co. Father Joseph Greaton died at
Bohemia, the 10th day of August. Father John Lewis
" officiated at his funeral." Father James Farrar died at
Hooton in Cheshire, the ISth of July.— Pennsylvania : Robert
Harding, at St. Joseph's, Philadelphia ; Mathias Manners,

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. \JJ

alias Sittinsperger, Conewago ; Theodore Schneider, in Here-
ford Township, Berks County.

1754— John Lewis, at Bohemia ; George Hunter, at St. Thomas'
Manor ; Michael Murphy, at Newtown Manor. — Pennsyl-
vania: Robert Harding; Mathias Manners; Theodore
Schneider.

1755 — George Hunter; James Carroll; Michael Murphy. — Penn-
sylvania; Robert Harding; Mathias Manners; Theodore
Schneider.

1756 — Father George Hunter returned to England in October.
Father James Carroll died at the Newtown Manor. Father
James Lancaster died at Loretto, on the 3d of December. —
Pennsylvania : Robert Harding, Theodore Schneider, Mathias
Manners.

1757 — James Ashbey, alias Middlehurst; William Boucher. Fa-
ther Boucher was but a short time on the Maryland Mission.
He died in England on the 28th of September, in this year. —
Pennsylvania : the same.

1758 — Richard Molyneux died in England. George Hunter was
in England in March of this year. Father Ferdinand Steyn-
meyer, alias Farmer, came to Philadelphia, and remained in
that city until his death, in 178(5. John Lewis, at Bohemia ;
James Breadnall ; James Ashbey, " late of Newtown," now at
St. Thomas' Manor ; Father James Augustin Framback came
with Father James Pellentz and two other Jes-uits from Eng-
land ; Father Pellentz spent ten years at Lancaster, Pennsyl-
vania, and one year and a half at Frederick Town, Md. —
Pennsylvania : the same.

1759 — George Hunter, Superior, returned from England, the 1st of
July. Father Peter Davis died in England, the 1st of July.
Father Michael Murphy died at Newtown Manor ; John King-
dom arrived from England with Father Hunter; Joseph Mos-
ley at Newtown. — Pennsylvania: Ferdinand Farmer, Robert
Harding, Mathias Manners, Theodore Schneider.

1760 — George Hunter ; Richard Boucher died in England; Vin-
cent Phillips died at Ghent, in Belgium ; John Kingdom, Jo-
seph Mosley, at Newtown, Pastor of St. Joseph's Church, St.
Joseph's Forest, St. Mary's County, Md. ; James Framback. —

I78 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

Pennsylvania : Father Frederick Leonards arrived, and
formed a new settlement with German colonists.

1761 — George Hunter; Thomas Gerard died in England; John
Kingdom died at Portobacco ; Lewis Benjamin Roels arrived
from England, the 24th of June ; John Lewis ; James Ashbey
at St. Inigoes ; Arnold Livers, James Framback. Father
John Digges died in November. — Pennsylvania : Ferdinand
Farmer, Robert Harding.

1762 — Ralph Falkner ; Father Joseph Hattersty arrived July
12th ; Joseph Mosley at St. Thomas' Manor.

1763 — St. Mary's Church, Philadelphia, was begun this year. Jo-
seph Mosley, at St. Thomas', attending Sakia and Newport.
John Williams at Frederick. He begins to build the Church
and Residence.

1764 — George Hunter ; Joseph Mosley went to Bohemia ; Father
Frederick Leonards died the 28th of October, at Portobacco.
— Pennsylvania : Ferdinand Farmer ; Robert Harding ; Fa-
ther Theodore Schneider died at Goshenhoppen.

1765 — George Hunter, Superior; James Walton and Ignatius
Matthews arrived in St. Mary's County in December ; John
B. De Ritter and John Boone came on the 31st of May ; John
Lewis at White Marsh ; Joseph Mosley settled at St. Joseph's,
Talbot County, Md., on the 18th of March. — Pennsylvania :
Ferdinand Farmer ; Robert Harding ; James Pellentz, at Phil-
adelphia.

1766 — James Ashbey, at Newtown Manor; John Bolton and James
Breadnall, at Newtown ; Richard Molyneux died in England,
the 17th of May; John Lewis; Joseph Mosley. — Pennsylva-
nia : Ferdinand Farmer ; Mathias Manners ; Robert Harding.

1767 — George Hunter; Arnold Livers, at St. Inigoes; James Ash-
bey died at Newtown ; James Walton. — Pennsylvania : Fer-
dinand Farmer ; Robert Harding ; Philip O'Reilly, in Phila-
delphia.

1768 — George Hunter ; James Walton began to live alone at Fred-
erick, the 27th of June ; John Williams left Frederick, July
27th, and returned to England ; Joseph Hattersty and Peter
Morris, at Newtown ; John Lewis; James Breadnall. — Penn-
sylvania : Ferdinand Farmer ; Robert Harding.

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. 1 79

1769 — George Hunter, at St. Thomas' Manor ; James Walton,
Manager at Newtown ; Joseph Mosley, at St. Joseph's, on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland ; George Knight ; Joseph Hat-
tersty, at Newtown ; John Lewis, at St. Inigoes ; Father Hun-
ter went to Canada, May 24th, and thence to England ; Philip
O'Reilly returned to Ireland. — Pennsylvania: Ferdinand
Farmer ; Robert Harding ; Luke Geisler arrived at Philadel-
phia, March the 26th.

1770 — Father Hunter returned from England, May 18th ; James
Breadnall ; Peter Morris ; John Lucas came from England ;
John Boone returned from Europe (Father Hunter) ; James
Walton ; Joseph Hattersty, at Philadelphia.

1771 — John Lewis ; Peter Morris ; Robert Molyneu.x ; Joseph Hat-
tersty died at Philadelphia, the 8th of May, aged 35 ; Father
Hattersty was a most holy and zealous missionary ; James
Pellentz ; James Walton, in St. Mary's County, Md. ; John
Bolton arrived March 21st; Mathias Manners, at Bohemia.

1772 — John Lewis, in St. Mary's County, Md. Father James
Breadnall died at Newtown, September the 1st, according to
some. I think he died in 1775.

1773 — Twenty Fathers in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Their
names are: John Ashton, Thomas Digges, James Framback,
Ferdinand Farmer, Luke Geisler, George Hunter, John Lewis,
John Lucas, Mathias Manners, Ignatius Matthews, Peter
Morris, Joseph Mosley, Benedict Neale, James Pellentz, Lewis
Roels, Bernard Rich (Diderich), J. B. De Ritter, James Wal-
ton, John Bolton, and Robert Molyneux. If it be true, as I
have good grounds to think it is, that Father Harding's death
occurred only in 1775, then there were twenty-one Fathers of
the English Province in this country at the time of the Sup-
pression.

1774 — John Bolton ; Father Richard Gillibrand, who served the
Maryland Mission for some time, died at Bath, March 23d.
Robert Molyneux at Philadelphia ; Anthony Carroll in the
same city ; John Carroll arrived on the 26th of June ; Sylves-
ter and John Boarman came the 21st of March ; Chas. Sewall
and Augustine Jenkins came the 24th of May ; Mathias Man-

180 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND."

ners at Bohemia ; Ferdinand Farmer at Philadelphia. John
Baptist De Ritter at Goshenhoppen.

1775 — John Lewis, Superior and Vicar-General, at St. Inigoes ;
Austin Jenkins ; Robert Molyneux ; Mathias Manners died at
Bohemia on the 15th of June; Joseph Mosley at Bohemia;
Philip O'Reilly, a missionary for some time in Maryland, and
afterwards distinguished in Guiana, died in Dublin the 24th of
February ; Anthony Carroll left for England on the 7th or 8th
of May. Bernard Diderick attended Baltimore and Elk Ridge
from 1775 to 1784.

1776 — Augustine Jenkins ; Peter Morris, at Bohemia ; James Wal-
ton ; Ferdinand Farmer at Philadelphia ; Robert Molyneux at
Philadelphia.

1777 — Arnold Livers died at St. Inigoes, August 16th.

1778 — George Hunter, at St. Thomas' Manor; James Walton, at
Newtown ; Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia.

1779 — John Lewis, at Bohemia ; Superior and Vicar-General ;
Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia; Father George Hunter
died at St. Thomas', on August the 1st, and was buried beside
Father John Kingdom and Father Leonards. Ignatius Mat-
thews at Port Tobacco.

1780 — John Lewis, Superior and Vicar-General; Ferdnand Far-
mer and Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia ; John Ashton ;
Ignatius Matthews, at Port Tobacco; James Walton, at New-
town Manor; Austin Jenkins with Father Walton ; John Car-
roll, at his mother's residence in Montgomery County ; Thos.
Digges ; Joseph Mosley, Talbot County, Md. ; Benedict
Neale ; John Bolton, in Charles County ; Charles Sewall.

1781— Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia; Father Wappeler died
at Ghent, in Belgium, — an old paper before me says he died
at Bruges.

1782 — John Lewis, Superior, at Bohemia; Bernard Diderick; Ig-
natius Matthews, at St. Thomas' Manor; Peter Morris died
suddenly at Newtown, November the 19th ; Lewis Roels.

1783 — Ferdinand Farmer, at Philadelphia ; John Boarman, at Port
Tobacco; Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia.

1 78 I — James Walton succeeded Ignatius Matthews as Pastor of St.

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. l8l

Inigoes on the 19th of December ; Henry Pile arrived in the
month of July ; John Boone.

1785 — Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia; Father Walton builds
the second church at St. Inigoes. He laid the corner-stone
on the 13th of July ; John Ashton, Procurator; Ferdinand
Farmer at Philadelphia ; James Pellentz, Conewago ; Charles
Sewall, at Baltimore ; Luke Geisler, in Lancaster County, Pa.
John Lewis, at Bohemia; Henry Pile, at Newport, Charles
County, Md.

1786 — Father Ferdinand Farmer died at Philadelphia on the 17th
of August ; Father John Baptist De Ritter died on the 3d of
October; Robert Molyneux at Philadelphia; Luke Geisler
and Francis Beeston with Father Molyneux ; St. Peter's
Church, New York City, was to have been opened on the 4th
of November of this year. The " first stone " of St. Peter's
was laid by the Spanish Minister. Luke Geisler died at Cone-
wago, August 10th.

1787 — Robert Molyneux, at Philadelphia ; Francis Beeston with
Father Molyneux ; Benedict Neale died at Newtown on the
20th of March ; Joseph Mosley died at St. Joseph's, Talbot
• County, and was buried in the church which he himself had
built ; John Bolton succeeded Father Mosley at St. Joseph's,
Eastern Shore of Maryland.

1788 — Charles Sewall at Baltimore ; Father John Lewis died at
Bohemia, the 24th of March. Robert Molyneux left Philadel-
phia to succeed Father Lewis ; Francis Beeston at Philadel-
phia ; Francis Neale left Li6ge on the 3d of April, and was in
Baltimore in November ; John Bolton, at St. Joseph's, Talbot
County.

1789 — Robert Molyneux, at Bohemia.

1790 — Francis Beeston, at Philadelphia, up to the 29th of May ;
Charles Sewall, at Baltimore ; Robert Plunkett ; Francis Neale.
Father Ignatius Matthews died at Newtown on the 11th of
May. Francis Beeston spent a part of this year at Bohemia.
Father Charles Neale, at Port Tobacco.

1791— John Ashton and Robert Plunkett, at White Marsh ; Fran-
cis Beeston, at St. Thomas' Manor.

1 82 CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND.

1792 — James Framback, at Frederick ; Charles Sewall, at Balti-
more ; Father Charles Neale, at Port Tobacco.

1793 — Bernard Diderick died in September, at Notley Hall ; Fran-
cis Beeston, at St. Thomas' Manor; Charles Sewall, at Bo-
hemia ; Father Charles Neale, at Port Tobacco.

1794 — Father Louis Roels died at St. Thomas' Manor on the 27th
of February ; Father John Lucas died on the 11th of Septem-
ber ; Father Anthony Carroll was killed by robbers in London
on the 5th of September ; Father John Boarman died at New-
town ; Francis Beeston, at Baltimore.

1795 — Father John Boone died at St. Inigoes on the 11th of April ;
at the same station died Father James Framback, on the 17th
of August.

1796 — Robert Molyneux, at Georgetown College, in June ; Fran-
cislBeeston, at Baltimore.

1797 — John Ashton, at White Marsh ; Charles Sewall, Agent of the
Corporation ; Robert Molyneux, at Newtown ; Henry Pile, at
Newport, Charles County, Md. Francis Beeston, at Baltimore.

1798 — James Walton, in St. Mary's County ; Charles Sewall, at St.
Thomas' Manor ; Austin Jenkins, at Newtown ; Robert Moly-
neux, Superior, at Newtown ; John Bolton, at St. Joseph's,
Talbot County.

1799 — Robert Molyneux, at Newtown ; John Bolton at St. Joseph's,
Talbot County, Md ; Austin Jenkins, at Newtown ; Henry
Pile, at Newport ; Charles Sewall, at St. Thomas' Manor.

1800 — Father James Pellentz died at Conewago on the 13th of
March ; Father Augustine Jenkins died at Newtown Manor,
on the 2d of February ; Sylvester Boarman arrived at New-
town, August 14th ; Robert Molyneux, at Newtown ; Henry
Pile, at Newport.

1801— John Bolton,- at St. Joseph's, Talbot County ; Robert Moly-
neux, at Newtown ; Ignatius B. Brooke, at Newtown ; Henry
Pile, at Newport ; Father Charles Neale, at Port Tobacco.

1802 — John Bolton came to Newtown on the 7th of April ; Ignatius
Baker Brooke, Newtown ; Robert Molyneux, Newtown, Fran-
cis Neale, at Georgetown College.

1803 — Robert Molyneux, Ignatius B. Brooke, and John Bolton, at
Newtown ; Father Joseph Doyne died at St. Thomas' Manor,

CATALOGUE OF EARLY JESUITS IN MARYLAND. 1 83

Charles County, Md. ; Father James Walton died at St. In-
igoes ; Henry Pile served at Newport and Cob Neck, Charles
County ; Charles Sewall, St. Thomas' Manor ; Sylvester Boar-
man, at St. Inigoes ; Francis Neale, at Georgetown ; Charles
Neale, at Port Tobacco.

1804 — Robert Molyneux, at Newtown ; Ignatius B. Brooke and
John Bolton, at Newton ; Charles Sewall, at St. Thomas'
Manor ; Sylvester "Boarman, at St. Inigoes ; Francis Neale, at
Georgetown College ; Henry Pile, at Newport, Charles Co.,
Md. ; Father Charles Neale, at Port Tobacco.

1805 — Father Molyneux left Newtown in August, and went to
Georgetown College ; he was appointed Superior of the Mis-
sion, and resided at St. Thomas' Manor; Ignatius B. Brooke,
John Bolton, at Newton ; Francis Beeston ; Sylvester Boar-
man, at St. Inigoes ; Father Thomas Digges died at Balti-
more ; Charles Sewall, St. Thomas' Manor ; Francis Neale,
at Georgetown College ; Father Charles Neale, at Port To-
bacco.

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